Credit Cards · August 2026
American Express publishes rate PDFs and keeps APR in page code
An AI agent ran five ordinary credit cards tasks on the public pages of American Express and scored what each page delivered.
Run 6 August 2026 · five tasks · public pages, logged out · Issuer
58/100
Mystery Agent score
Credit Cards · rank 18 of 25
Purchase APR
70Partly served
Card comparison
88Served as text
Pricing and terms
87Served as PDF
Welcome offer
25Partly served
Application page
18Automated reader declined
Summary
- Amex hosts a complete library of dated Rates and Fees PDFs for every card, reachable with a plain link and no login.
- An agent read the Platinum Card's purchase APR of 29.49% directly from structured data embedded in the page, with no script needed.
- Adding the APR figure to the page's visible marketing text as well as its structured data would let every reader see it.
Task by task
Each task is scored out of 100 on completion, answer quality and how directly the answer was reached. Each note describes what the page delivered, with a link to the page the answer was found on.
Task 01Purchase APRPartly served70 out of 100
The Platinum Card page carries a schema.org data block stating the annual percentage rate as 29.49%, readable directly from the page without running any script.
Task 02Card comparisonServed as text88 out of 100
Blue Cash Everyday and Blue Cash Preferred publish complete terms as text: Everyday carries no annual fee and 3% cash back on groceries and gas, while Preferred charges $95 after a free first year for 6% at supermarkets.
Task 03Pricing and termsServed as PDF87 out of 100
The Cardmember Agreements hub links dated, downloadable PDFs for every card with no login needed; the Platinum PDF opens a full rates table listing Prime plus 12.74% to Prime plus 21.74% and an $895 annual fee.
Task 04Welcome offerPartly served25 out of 100
The Blue Cash Everyday page's underlying data states a welcome offer worth reaching after spending $2,000 within six months, though the exact bonus value is confirmed only once an application is underway.
Task 05Application pageAutomated reader declined18 out of 100
robots.txt asks agents to avoid the application path directly, so an agent read the Platinum product page instead, which describes the process in general terms while SSN and income requirements appear on a different page.
Amex publishes complete, dated Rates and Fees Table PDFs for every personal and business card.
The application page
What the account opening page states to a reader that runs no scripts.
3,238,699Bytes delivered
40,478Characters of visible text
13Form fields in the first response
After scripts runWhat an applicant needs
Strengths and opportunities
What is working
- Amex publishes complete, dated Rates and Fees Table PDFs for every personal and business card in one public Cardmember Agreements library, reachable with a plain GET and no login.
- Card product pages carry accurate schema.org CreditCard structured data; the Platinum page serves its APR as plain text in that markup without requiring any JavaScript execution to read it.
- robots.txt is short, readable, and gives one clear instruction about the application path, which is a more respectful signal to agents than an undisclosed block or a bot-detection wall.
Opportunities
- Publish the purchase APR or Pay Over Time APR range as visible marketing text on each card's own product page, not only inside the PDF disclosure and the JSON-LD block that customers rarely see.
- Move welcome offer spend requirements and time windows out of unrendered JSON and into visible page text, so a customer or agent reading the rendered page sees the same offer language the HTML already contains.
- Consider adding the schema.org APR field to every card's page, not just Platinum's; Gold Card and Blue Cash Everyday currently omit it entirely, an inconsistency that looks like an oversight rather than a decision.
Access
Every page the agent requested was delivered on the first attempt. An llms.txt file is published, which gives agent traffic a documented entry point.
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