American Express has dropped a new promotion for ‘select’ members, offering them a 30% refund on their points as long as they use their Membership Rewards points for a spend to extinguish a cash expense or a statement credit.

American Express “Redeem and Earn” Offer

American Express has rolled out a new “Redeem & Earn” Offer for select American Express Cardmembers whose accounts are valid and in good standing.

The following cards have been targetted:

• American Express Platinum Card
• American Express Platinum Reserve Credit Card
• American Express Platinum Travel Credit Card
• American Express Gold Card
• American Express Membership Rewards Credit Card
• American Express SmartEarn Credit Card

The promotion, valid from September 1 to October 31, 2021, offers 30% Points back on eligible redemptions done during the offer period. Eligible redemption transactions include:

• SafeKey Transactions: While making payment(s) to any of American Express’ online merchants, a ‘SafeKey’ screen appears where you can select the ‘Use Pay with Points’ option to pay for your charges.
• Select & Redeem (Pay Card Charges with points): This option allows you to pay for any item on your Card statement with your Points. Cardmembers need to redeem a minimum of 1,000 points at one time for each redemption process.

It can take up to 3 working days to debit the points and a corresponding statement credit applied to your account. The usual redemption is worth INR 0.25 per MR point, and in this case, American Express is offering to refund a different number of points, which is directly communicated to you:

• Uncapped (any amount of points used will get a 30% credit back)
• Up to 3,000 Membership Rewards Points (Maximum Redemption of 10,000 MR points will get you here)
• Up to 5,000 Membership Rewards Points (Maximum Redemption of 16,667 MR points will get you here)
• Up to 10,000 Membership Rewards Points (Maximum Redemption of 33,333 MR points will get you here)

Hence, the value of the Membership Rewards points used by you grows from INR 0.25 point per MR redeemed to INR 0.36 point per MR redeemed in this case, still far away from the double value of INR 0.5 that was offered in 2020.

Membership Rewards Points as Points Back will be credited by January 31, 2022.

Bottomline

American Express is offering a 30% return on points for select members in the American Express cardmember base. Once they spend the requisite MR points, they expect the 30% MR to be returned to their account by January 2022. It is not the greatest use of MR since one can get much more value using them for travel otherwise, but it might work for some sitting on high balances.

What do you make of the new American Express MR Points Back offer?

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