When American Express quietly rolled out its new quarterly Resy dining credit on the Amex Platinum in September 2025, most U.S.-based cardholders barely noticed the mechanics. They booked a table, went to dinner, paid the bill, and moved on.

From London, it looked very different.

As a U.S. cardholder spending much of my time abroad, I do not have the luxury of casually “using” U.S.-only credits. Physical presence is important. Timing is tight. And when something new launches late in a quarter, downside risks appear. When Amex introduced the $100-per-quarter Resy credit, Q3 was already closing and I had no U.S. flights scheduled before the September 30 quarter end. I had days, not months, to decide whether it was usable from across the Atlantic.

This piece documents that experiment. What I tested. What failed. What unexpectedly worked.

This is not a guide. It’s a record of that test.

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On paper, the new Resy credit was generous: $400 a year at participating restaurants, split into $100 quarterly credits.

The problem for me was accessing the first one.

I wasn’t in the U.S. I couldn’t dine in person before September 30. And Amex’s terms suggest gift cards are unlikely to be reimbursed.

But for expats, and for Americans living in places without a meaningful Resy footprint, gift cards and prepaid instruments are often the only available lever.

So the question was simple:

Can the new Resy credit be triggered without being physically present?

If the answer was “no,” that would still be a useful result.

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By late summer, a secondary ecosystem had already sprung up around the Resy credit.

Tools like UseYourCredits mapped hundreds of participating restaurants, giving the impression that the credit was effectively limitless in practice. Others pointed to Toast-based gift cards or reloadable restaurant balances as a workaround: buy now, dine later, trigger the credit remotely.

What most of that discussion glosses over is the variable that actually governs outcomes: how the transaction posts, not how the restaurant is discovered.

Amex does not award credits based on platform affiliation or intent. It awards them based on merchant descriptors, processors, and routing. That distinction turned out to be the determining factor in this test.

At this stage, even a success would not imply general reliability.

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The restaurants I tested were not “must-do” bookings already locked into an itinerary.

They fell into three categories:

If a credit didn’t post, nothing was wasted. I would still use the restaurant on a future New York visit. The setup limited downside.

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Pig Beach was never expected to trigger a Resy credit. It is not currently on Resy’s network, and I wasn’t trying to force it. I included it deliberately as a control: a restaurant I planned to try anyway, using a typical third-party-processed gift card.

As expected, the $100 gift card purchase routed through Toast and posted with a third-party descriptor. No credit. No ambiguity.

That baseline showed what a “normal” restaurant gift card looks like to Amex when nothing special is happening.

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I then tested several restaurants that were Resy-listed.

The Smith

Resy-listed. Toast-based gift card.

Descriptor: third-party.

Result: no Resy credit.

Bubby’s

Resy-listed. Gift intermediary involved.

Descriptor: not clean.

Result: no Resy credit.

In each case, the pattern was the same. Despite being legitimate Resy restaurants, the transactions routed through Toast or a gift-card layer and posted with third-party descriptors. That appears to be where Amex draws the exclusion line.

At this point, the rational conclusion would have been that Amex had effectively closed the door on gift cards for Resy credits.

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One variable remained untested.

L’Artusi’s e-gift card system appeared direct. No Toast checkout. No marketplace wrapper. No visible intermediary.

I hadn’t been there before, but it was a restaurant I had been meaning to try anyway. If the credit failed, the card would still get used.

So I took one final punt.

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A $100 L’Artusi e-gift card was purchased via Apple Pay late in Q3 2025.

Days later, the charge posted as:

“L’ARTUSI RESTAURANT NEW YORK NY”

There was no “statement credit coming soon” email.

And then, within a day or so, the $100 Q3 Resy credit posted cleanly, with no further action from my side.

With that confirmation, a second $100 gift card was purchased on a separate Platinum card from my household, drawing against its own quarterly Resy credit, under the same conditions.

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After multiple failures and one success, the pattern became clear.

Amex does not care:

What it needs to see is:

L’Artusi worked because the transaction looked indistinguishable from an in-person meal, despite being a gift card. Most others did not.

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This does not mean:

It also does not mean every Resy restaurant’s gift cards behave the same way. If you do not already want to eat there, test small amounts.

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This experiment reflects late Q3 2025 behavior, shortly after the Resy credit launched, during a period when Amex enforcement and merchant routing were still settling. For expats, and Americans outside major U.S. cities, this distinction is more consequential than it is for U.S.-based cardholders. We cannot rely on casual in-person fallbacks.

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Even if the final credit had not posted, the experiment would have paid for itself in information.

As an expat, knowing what does not work is often more valuable than chasing every rumored workaround. It sharpens future decisions, prevents wasted effort, and keeps planning grounded.

In this case, the useful outcome was clarity, not just the $100 credit.

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