Credit Card Perks: Acquiring and Utilizing American Express Rewards
American Express's Membership Rewards (MR) points offer a lucrative way to earn rewards for your business spending. Here's a breakdown of how you can make the most of these points.
Earning Points
The American Express® Business Gold Card earns 4 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent in the top two eligible categories, up to a combined spend of $150,000 per year. These categories include U.S. purchases at restaurants, U.S. purchases at gas stations, U.S. purchases for advertising in select media, U.S. purchases made directly from select technology providers, transit purchases, and monthly wireless telephone service charges made directly from a wireless telephone service provider in the U.S. [1]
Other AmEx cards, such as the Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express and the Business Green Rewards Card from American Express, also earn Membership Rewards points. The Platinum Card® from American Express offers 5 points per dollar spent on eligible flights and prepaid hotels booked through American Express, and the Business Platinum Card® from American Express earns 1.5 points per dollar on eligible purchases at U.S. construction material and hardware suppliers, electronic goods retailers, software and cloud system providers, and shipping providers, as well as on purchases of $5,000 or more everywhere else, on up to $2 million of these purchases per calendar year. [1]
Maximising Value
To maximise the value of your Membership Rewards points, the best approach is to transfer points to airline and hotel partners and redeem them for premium flights, especially business class. This transfer method typically yields the highest return compared to other redemption options. For example, a round-trip business class ticket may require around 100,000 MR points for a fare valued at $1,800, translating to about 1.8 cents per point. [1]
Key ways to maximise value include:
- Transferring points to airline partners such as Aeroplan and then booking premium cabins or award flights through their frequent flyer programs to maximise cents per point. [1][3]
- Taking advantage of welcome bonuses and category bonuses on cards like the Amex Gold Card (which offers 4X points at restaurants and U.S. supermarkets) to build a large point balance faster. [4]
- Using points for travel booking via American Express Travel gives a fixed value of about 1 cent per point, which is decent but usually lower than transferring points to partners. [2]
- Avoid redeeming points for statement credits, gift cards, or shopping on sites like Amazon, as the value is often less than or around 0.7 cents per point. [2]
- Leveraging Amex Offers for bonus points on specific categories or retailers and referral bonuses to increase your points pool at lower cost. [3]
Conclusion
In summary, the highest redemption value is achieved through strategic point transfers to travel partners to book premium travel. Other redemption methods like booking via Amex Travel or paying with points at checkout provide convenience but generally lower per-point value. [1][2][3]
Membership Rewards points can be used for booking travel, redeeming for statement credit or gift cards, or transferring them to partner airline or hotel loyalty programs. [1]
- The American Express Business Gold Card earns more Membership Rewards points when used for business spending in specific categories.
- To maximize the value of Membership Rewards points, transferring them to airline and hotel partners for premium flights is typically the best approach.
- Using Membership Rewards points for travel booking via American Express Travel can provide decent value, although it's generally lower than transferring points to partners.
- Points can also be used for statement credits, gift cards, or shopping, but the value is often less than when transferring to partners or booking travel.
