What Can I Do With Amex Points?

If you’ve been looking into what credit cards you can use to collect travel points you’ve probably come across American Express and their range of American Express Membership Reward (Amex Points) earning cards. But what are Amex Points and what can you do with them? Read on to find out…

What are Amex Points?

Amex Points (Membership Rewards points) are a global currency offered by American Express to reward users of their charge cards & some of their credit cards. Think of it as a ‘cashback’ card, not in cash but points that can be redeemed for various things. It’s important to remember any points you earn are instead of cashback you could have got from another card.

Although a global currency (e.g. users in other countries earn Amex points too) the scheme has different partners and different conversion rates in different countries.

How do I earn Amex Points?

This is my experience using the points system and is not a recommendation of any financial product. There are other credit cards which can earn you travel points including IHG credit card, Tesco Credit Cards (by exchanging Clubcard points for avios, hotel stays and more) & Virgin Atlantic credit card. If you use one of my links for a referral to an American Express card upon you being accepted I will receive points, this varies between 9,000 – 18,000 depending on the card I refer you from.

To get a referral (for bonus points) go here – https://pointsuncovered.com/amex-referral-link-uk/

You can earn Amex Points from the Centurion, Platinum, Gold, Green and their equivalent Corporate and Small Business cards. Additional personal users can earn Amex Points on The American Express Rewards Credit Card. All cards earn 1 membership reward per £1 on general spend. The most popular (because it’s FREE for the first year) Amex point earning card is the Amex Gold card below…

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card

Sign-up bonus –  10,000 Membership Reward points (Spend £3000 in 3 months)
Annual fee – FREE for the first year (normally £140)
Earn rate – 1 Membership Reward point per £1
Other Travel Benefits – 2 free lounge passes.
Notes – As the first year is FREE this often recommended as the first card for newbies to ‘point collecting.’ The 2 free lounge passes are handy too. Earn an additional 10,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend £15,000 each year.

There a variety of other cards American Express offers which earn other points or cash back instead of points. You can read about all the ones I’ve mentioned above here – https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/credit-cards/all-cards/?linknav=uk-amex-cardshop-RewardsCreditCard-details-viewallcards – click on Membership Rewards at the top.

It’s important to remember you must keep an American Express card that earns Amex points to retain your points. If you cancel your card and haven’t redeemed the points or if you don’t have another Amex point earning card you will forfeit all your points! If you want to avoid the annual fee of your card and keep your points read our post on How to keep your membership reward points when you cancel Amex gold or Amex platinum.

What Can I Do With Amex Points?

You can redeem them for a credit against your Amex statement.  This gets you 0.45p per point. But seeing as you are on a travel site you are unlikely to be interested in that (and it’s very poor value.)

You can view the American Express Membership Reward homepage here – https://www.americanexpress.com/en-gb/rewards/membership-rewards/

Here you will find the various opportunities you can redeem your points towards. Below is a summary of some of the options…

Airlines

1 membership reward point will get you…

• 1 Alitalia mile
• 1 Asia Mile
• 1 British Airways Avios
• 1 Delta mile
• 1 Emirates mile
• 1 Etihad mile
• 1 Finnair mile
• 1 Flying Blue mile
• 1 Iberia Plus Avios
• 1 Qantas point
• 1 SAS mile
• 1 Singapore Airlines mile
• 1 Virgin Atlantic mile

Hotels

1 membership reward point will get you…

• 2 Hilton Honors points
• 3 Radisson Rewards points

2 membership reward point will get you…

• 3 Marriott Bonvoy points

Other

1 membership reward point will get you…

• 1 Nectar Points

1500 membership reward point will get you…

• 100 Club Eurostar points

What value should I get from my Amex Points?

This is a very subjective and personal decision. If you earn a ton of points from business expenses that are reimbursed you may have a lesser valuation to if you purely earn through personal spend.

How you are happy to travel also dictates the value of points, if you are happy to hop around Europe on a budget airline, hand luggage only with no extras. Redeeming £35pp plus avios may not seem like such a good deal just to fly BA short haul however you may find greater value redeeming for business class for the experience £50pp plus avios in Europe or flying business/first class long haul.

The same principle applies to hotels, if you will happily spend your time in budget hotels and hostels in Europe… do hotel travel points have any value to you? Perhaps Avios will be a better collection choice or maybe you’d prefer to save them up for a big trip! E.g. special occasion or when travelling to somewhere like the Caribbean!

I currently value Avios points at 1p, Marriott Bonvoy points at 0.66p & Hilton Honors points at 0.5p. I base this roughly on the cost of flights/hotels in cash divided by the price in points.

This can and will vary on multiple factors including when you book and how busy a flight or hotel is. Most Flights/Hotels have a fixed peak/off-peak maximum price in points whereas cash prices can vary greatly.

All these mean I am pretty much getting 1p+ per membership reward points. An effective cashback rate of 1%… of course it’s possible to do a lot better than that, but that is the minimum level I tend to redeem at.

Avoid redeeming as a credit against your Amex statement.  This gets you 0.45p per point which is very poor!

When should I transfer Amex Points?

Only when you need them. It’s as simple as that! (Unless there is a transfer bonus on that you want to take advantage of.) The power of Amex Points is that they are flexible and can sit in your account into you need them.

Make sure you set up the loyalty schemes you may wish to transfer into in advance. This will save time when you want to make your first transfer into that scheme. To do this, simply login into your Amex account, go to ‘use your points’ and begin to make a transfer to the loyalty scheme you want to set up.

You can view the American Express Membership Reward homepage here – https://www.americanexpress.com/en-gb/rewards/membership-rewards/

Conclusion

I class Amex Points as among the most valuable points you can collect. Why? They offer the flexibility to be converted into various schemes as and when you need them. This will help you to avoid getting caught out by loyalty scheme devaluations and give you the flexibility of a variety of loyalty schemes in case one doesn’t have availability or you no longer like one!