Any difference between platinum, gold, and regular credit cards, or is it all martketing? I never really thought about it. Just figured I'd ask...
Platinum cards have better benefits, which are better than gold which are better than regular. For instance my GM card doesn't have rental insurance, but the platinum version does. While researching this I am almost positive that VISA and Marstercard have the different levels of cards for specific markets. The banks just add their rewards.
There isn't that much difference between Gold and Platinum regarding the benefits (car rental insurance, extended warranty, purchase protection). It was supposed to be that a Platinum credit limit should be above $5,000, and the Gold can be lower than this, but even that does not apply nowadays (Cap One $500 Platinum card). It goes something like this: For Visa: Infinite Signature Platinum Gold Regular For MC: World Platinum Gold Regular
It's all in the marketing. IMHO, A real prime bank would offer platinum only with a CL of 5000 (min), a single digit APR and some rewards perks. GOLD doesn't really mean anything anymore, your either prime or subprime, that is, platinum or regular. But like others have mentioned, there are banks that give plat cards with 20+ APRs and CL as low as $300. Bottom line is this, I don't care about the color/looks of the card (though some merchants do!), I only care about the terms.
I think that banks today, as others here have said, do not necessarily tie terms to the level of the card. The real difference these days is only the benefits package that the banks license from MasterCard/Visa, etc. George's wife's gold card probably had better financial terms, but different levels/kinds of insurance programs. For these sorts of things you can check Visa's and MasterCard's websites, although every issuer might not participate in every available program. So it might be worth it for someone who travels a lot and has a family to have a "toy" platinum card that offers $500,000 to $1,000,000 in accidental death benefitis for -- say an airline crash -- than it would be for that same person to have a classic card with much better financial terms that doesn't come with the insurance.
