Diwali 2023: How to maximise reward points and other benefits on American Express credit cards

Maximize reward points and other benefits on American Express credit cards

During the festive season of Diwali, American Express offers various offers to its cardholders. As an American Express credit cardholder, you can club multiple offers in one transaction and maximize your benefits. Here’s how you can do it.

⦁ Base reward rate and milestone benefits

When you swipe your American Express credit card for an online or offline transaction (except for excluded spending categories), you earn 1 reward point per RC. 50 spent. It is called the base reward rate. Apart from the basic reward rate, different cards have different benefits.

For example, the American Express Platinum Travel Credit Card has two milestones:

⦁ You get 15,000 bonus reward points on spending Rs. 1.9 lakhs per annum.

⦁ When your annual spend reaches Rs. 4 lakhs, you will get 25,000 additional reward points and Rs. Stay 10,000 Taj Gift Voucher.

Similarly, the American Express Membership Rewards Credit Card (MRCC) has two milestones:

⦁ On making 4 transactions of Rs. 1,500 or more in a month, you get 1,000 bonus reward points

⦁ When your spend reaches Rs. 20,000 or more in a month, you will receive an additional 1,000 bonus reward points.

⦁ Double benefit opportunity

American Express sends offers based on spending from time to time. For example, many American Express cardholders received an offer based on festive spending that is valid from September 15 to November 15, 2023. According to the offer, when you spend the specified amount, you get a gift voucher of a specified amount.

Festive offer based on American Express spend

As seen in the above example, if the cardholder spends Rs. 50,000 or more, they will get Rs. 2,000 Amazon/Flipkart gift vouchers. Similarly, different cardholders have received different offers.

You can combine the benefits of the above festival-based offer with the basic reward points and milestone benefits, making it a double benefit opportunity.

⦁ Triple benefit opportunity

American Express has a Reward Multiplier (RM) platform that lists various online merchants. When you visit any listed merchant through the RM platform and store, you will earn 2X to 5X reward points (subject to certain terms and conditions). From time to time, American Express comes out with offers to shop through the RM platform, where they give gift vouchers of a specified brand for spending a specified amount.

For example, American Express has announced a spend-based offer valid from 16 October to 14 November 2023 for shopping through the RM platform. As per the offer, when you spend the specified amount or more, through merchants listed on the RM platform, you get a gift voucher of a specified amount.

American Express Reward Multiplier (RM) Festive spend-based offer.

As seen in the above example, when a cardholder spends Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 2 lakhs on the listed Reward Multiplier platform, they can earn gift vouchers worth Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 12,000.

You can club the benefits of the spend-based RM offer with the spend-based festival offer (discussed in the earlier section, which is valid from 15 September to 15 November 2023) and the base reward points and the milestone benefits, making it triple. -opportunity benefits.

You must ensure that all offers are valid on the date of your transaction to take advantage of multiple offers.

Important note: Please note that each American Express credit card has terms and conditions for earning different benefits such as direct discounts, reward points, and milestone benefits. Also, all American Express offers, whether based on festival spend or RM spend, are subject to specified terms and conditions. So please read and understand the card and offer terms and conditions.

Done

You can club multiple benefits like reward points, milestone benefits, festival spend based offer, RM spend based offer, etc. The direct discount on MRP provided by the online seller is an added bonus. It adds another set of benefits on top of those American Express offers on its credit cards.

Gopal Gidwani is a freelance personal finance content writer with 15+ years of experience. It can be reached at LinkedIn.

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Updated: 01 November 2023, 05:27 PM IST