How to easily move credit across your American Express cards online

Editor’s note: This is a recurring post, regularly updated with new information.

Managing your credit card portfolio can get complicated if you have several credit cards. This includes figuring out how to shift credit limits across cards. Luckily, the solution is simple if you’re an American Express cardmember.

Here’s what you need to know.

How to move credit across American Express cards

One option for moving credit across cards with American Express is to go to your “account services” tab at americanexpress.com and request a credit line increase. However, doing so may trigger an additional inquiry on your credit report. You also might not want American Express to give you any more credit.

Instead, there’s an easy series of steps you can take to reallocate credit limits between your American Express cards.

Head to the American Express website.
Log in to your Amex account via this link.
Choose the card from which you wish to take the credit limit.
Select the card you want to transfer the credit limit to.
Enter the amount of the credit you wish to transfer. (Amex will prepopulate the limits of what you’re allowed to move.)

After you submit the form, you may receive a message stating that you should wait 15 minutes for the new limits to appear — or they may appear instantly.

Screenshot of Amex credit limit update — AMERICAN EXPRESS

That’s it. It’s that simple.

Other things to know

Young woman online shopping from her kitchen — PEKIC/GETTY IMAGES

Here are some other things you should know when trying to transfer credit lines:

You can transfer from one personal card to another, from one business credit card to another and from a personal card to a business credit card. However, you cannot transfer from a business credit card to a personal card.
There may be limits to how old a card must be to transfer from or to it and how often you can transfer credit. If you get an error message after submitting the form, you may have run up against these limits. Unfortunately, we could not get an Amex phone agent to clarify these limits.
There is no hard or soft credit pull for transferring credit lines.
The cards you want to transfer between must be accessible in the same online profile.

Bottom line

Shifting your credit limits between cards is a handy online feature Amex offers, but I’m sure it’s not utilized as much as it should be. If you need to move credit lines around, avoid the phone and follow our instructions to do it online within minutes.