Membership Rewards Guide (2018)
Credit Card Reference, Introduction to 'Transferable' Reward Points
Amex’s reward program is called Membership Rewards. Membership Rewards homepage.
Membership Rewards is an excellent program for people who plan to use their points for frequent flyer tickets, and is the easiest program for earning massive amount of points from signup bonuses.
Membership Rewards has the most airline partners of the big three “transferable” points programs, although not as many as Starwood Preferred Guest. Unlike Ultimate Rewards, it frequently offers transfer promotions where you receive extra frequent flyer miles when you transfer your points to a specific partner.
But, Membership Rewards is not nearly as valuable as Ultimate Rewards for people who don’t want to mess around with frequent flyer tickets, as your next best option is using your points to pay for travel at only 1 cent each. However, if you have the Business Platinum card, the dynamics of the program changes. That card allows you to get 1.54 cents, rather than 1 cent, when you use your points to purchase premium-class airline tickets, or coach tickets on your preferred airline.
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Airline transfer partners
Most transfers happen instantly. However, it can take a few days for points to transfer to Aeromexico, ANA, Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles), Iberia, Singapore (KrisFlyer) or Virgin Atlantic.
| Star Alliance (United) |
SkyTeam (Delta) |
Oneworld (American) |
Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air Canada (Aeroplan) | Delta | British Airways | JetBlue (1000:800) |
| ANA (Japan) |
Air France / KLM (Flying Blue) |
Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles) |
Hawaiian Airlines |
| Singapore Airlines (KrisFlyer) |
Aeromexico (1000:1600) |
Iberia | Etihad |
| Alitalia |
Aer Lingus | Emirates | |
| Virgin Atlantic (1000:500) | |||
| El Al (1000:20) |
Air Canada frequently lets you avoid fuel surcharges on Star Alliance flights, but not for every airline (like United does). ANA offers great values to many destinations, and especially Japan.
It is helpful to have the availability to transfer points directly to Delta, so that you can book non-saver award space that sometimes only costs a small number of additional points.
Cathay Pacific and Iberia often let you spend fewer miles than British Airways when booking Oneworld awards. Singapore, Flying Blue, and British Airways offer many good award options, but are available through other credit card programs as well.
Remember that you can use miles from any of these programs to book awards with any of that program’s partner airlines. So, you can transfer your Membership Reward points to Air Canada, and then use those points to fly United, any of the two dozen or so other airlines that are part of the Star Alliance, or any of Air Canada’s other airline partners. Between all the partnerships, you can redeem your Membership Reward points on over 100 airlines.
- You need to pay a .06 cent per point fee, every time you transfer Membership Reward points to a partner program. Transferring enough points for a 50,000-point ticket, would cost $30 in fees. Transfer fees are capped at $99, so any additional points over 165,000 are free to transfer.
- Membership Rewards frequently runs promotions where you’ll get a better-than-normal rate for transferring your points to a specific partner airline during the promotional period. If you expect to have good opportunities to use points with a specific airline, you can transfer points during one of the promotions. You’ll give up the flexibility of using the points with a different program later, but you’ll get more miles from your points. Take Advantage of Transfer Bonuses to Get More Value from Your Reward Points.
Hotel transfer partners
The typical value that you can get from many types of hotel points is well under 1 cent per point. So, it will rarely make sense to transfer your points to a hotel partner.
| Hilton (1000:2000) |
Marriott |
Choice |
Cashing out your points
If you don’t want to mess with frequent flyer tickets, your best option is to get 1 cents per point when you purchase airfare through Amex travel, or purchase gift cards on the Amex website.
If you have the Business Platinum card, you can use your points for certain airfare tickets at 1.54 cents each. When you use your points to buy business or first-class airplane tickets, or coach tickets on your preferred airline, you will receive a 35% rebate. For example, if you wanted to purchase a $300 ticket, you would need to use 30,000 points. Then you’d get 10,500 points refunded to your account. This essentially lets you get 1.54 cents, instead of 1 cent, for each point you use. For people who are less interested in frequent flyer tickets, this makes Membership Rewards considerably more competitive with Ultimate Reward points.
Of course, not everyone is eligible to get the Business Platinum card, or will get enough value to pay its annual fee. If you are interested in getting a Platinum card anyway, are eligible for this card, and aren’t sure about committing yourself to frequent flyer redemptions, you should seriously consider getting the business version, instead of a personal Platinum card.
Membership Rewards credit cards
Targeted signup offers are sometimes available that are higher than the typical signup bonuses shown below. Most Membership Reward cards are charge cards, not credit cards—these are starred below. The reason this is relevant is that charge cards don’t count against Amex’s 4-5 card credit card limit.
| Card | Typical Signup Bonus | Bonus Categories | Effective Annual Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amex Platinum Card* | 40-100,000 | 5x airfare
5x hotels (prepaid at Amex Travel only, not very useful) |
$150-550 |
| Ameriprise Platinum* | 0-25,000 | $150-550, waived first year | |
| Schwab Platinum* (must be a customer) | 40-100,000 | $150-550 | |
| Morgan Stanley Platinum* (must be a customer) | 40-100,000 | $150-550 | |
| Goldman Sachs Platinum* (must be a customer) | 40-100,000 | $150-550 | |
| Amex Platinum Business Card* | 40-100,000 | 5x airfare (at Amex Travel) | $250-450 |
| Amex Gold* | 25-50,000 | 4x US restaurants
4x US supermarkets 3x airfare |
$30-250 |
| Amex Business Gold* | 25-50,000 | 2x airfare
2x US gas stations 2x US shipping, US advertising in select media, US computer related purchases. 3x purchases in one of the above 5 categories of your choice. |
$175, waved first year |
| Morgan Stanley* (must be a customer) | 10,000 | 2x airfare
2x US restaurants 2x select rental car companies 2x select department stores |
$0 |
| Amex Everyday Preferred | 15-30,000 | 4.5x U.S supermarkets
3x US gas stations 1.5x everywhere else (Assumes 50% bonus for making 30 transactions per month) |
$95 |
| Amex Everyday | 10-20,000 | 2.4x US supermarkets
(Assumes 20% bonus for making 20 transactions per month) |
$0 |
| Gold card for Ameriprise* | 0 – 25,000 | 2x airfare
2x US restaurants |
$160, waived first year |
| Amex Green Card* | 0-25,000 | - | $95, waived first year |
| Amex Business Green* | 5,000 | - | $95, waived first year |
| Blue Business Plus | 10,000 | 2x everywhere | $0 |
| Mercedes-Benz | 10,000 | - | $95 |
Because of the extremely large number of cards, and the lack of a rule like Chase 5/24, you can earn very large numbers of Membership Reward points from signup bonuses.
You can only earn each signup bonus once per lifetime, but you can earn the signup bonus for every version of a given card. Try to sign up when they are running a promotion for extra points. Occasionally, a targeted offer becomes available that allows you to earn the signup bonus, even if you had already earned it.
Because you can receive the Platinum card’s airline incidental credits every calendar year, it is possible to receive up to $400 in credit during the first year. If you can also get full use of the Uber credit, you’ll can get back more than $600 in credits, which is higher than the $550 annual fee. Similarly, you can get $200 back the first year on the Premier Rewards card.
When you have an existing card, Amex will occasionally make you an offer, where they will give you additional points if you upgrade to another card. Even if you had previously received the signup bonus for the upgraded card, you’ll still receive these additional points. If you haven’t previously had the new card, decline the offer to upgrade, so that you can eventually earn the signup bonus for the new card. But, if you have already had the new card, these upgrade offers can be very useful.
Bonus category opportunities
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The Blue for Business card offers the highest possible rate for everyday spending. It earns 2x Membership Reward points, regardless of the purchase category. However, it is a small business card, and the 2x rate is only available on the first $50,000 of purchases. | |
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The EveryDay Preferred Card has the potential of earning the best rate of the non-business cards on everyday spending, as well as the best possible rate on groceries (capped at $6,000 spending per year) and gas. You may be already using this card as your general-purpose reward card. If not, it is a good choice to add to your collection of Amex cards, assuming you are willing to make the effort to qualify for the bonus points you receive when you make 30 transactions per month. If not, you might consider the Blue Cash Preferred Card card instead. | |
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The Gold card offers great reward rates on groceries (capped at $25,000 spending per year) and restaurants (and airfare). It can be a good place to start earning bonus Membership Rewards, if you don’t want the EveryDay Preferred card. | |
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The Morgan Stanley Amex is a great alternative to the Premier Rewards card, if you are a Morgan Stanley customer. It is especially attractive in combination with the EveryDay Preferred, as there is no overlap in bonus categories. Until recently, most people had no reasonable path towards becoming a Morgan Stanley customer. But, now you can get started with their Access Account with a minimum account size of $5,000 and fees of .35%. | |
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In general, you are better off with non-Membership Reward cards for travel and restaurant spending, with the possible exception of the 5x Membership Reward points you can earn on airfare with the Amex Platinum card. Chase offers generally better options from business cards (if you can get them), and Amex doesn’t have a rotating category card. |
Point transfers and expiration
All your Membership Reward points should accrue to a single account, even if you have multiple cards. If you have at least one active card that earns Membership Reward points, you won’t forfeit your points. Getting or converting-to a no-annual-fee EveryDay card is a great option to keep your account active.
You can’t transfer Membership Rewards to another person. However, you can transfer your points into a partner program account that belongs to an authorized card holder. For example, you can make your spouse an authorized cardholder on one of your cards (in many cases with no additional fee). Then, you could transfer points from your Membership Rewards account to their Delta Airlines account.
