American Express (Amex) has restructured the rewards on its Membership Rewards Credit Card (MRCC) starting 1st April 2021. In an email sent to the card members today, Amex announced this change. Let’s look into the details of this reward restructuring to understand it better.
Changes
Starting 1st April 2021, following changes are applicable on earning of membership reward points on Amex Membership Rewards Credit Card:
- Monthly Bonus Reward Points: Card members will earn 1,000 bonus membership reward points on doing 4 transactions of Rs. 1,500 or more every calendar month. Earlier card members used to earn 1,000 bonus points on doing 4 transactions of Rs. 1,000 monthly.
- Additional Bonus Reward Points: Card members will earn 1,000 bonus membership reward points on spending Rs. 20,000 in a month. You need to enroll for this benefit using this form.
- Welcome Reward Points: Card members will earn 4,000 bonus membership reward points on spending Rs. 15,000 in the first 90 days of card membership. Earlier new card members used to earn 4,000 bonus membership reward points on spending Rs. 5,000 in the first 90 days of card membership.
Bottomline
Below table summarizes the reward rate for redeeming 18,000 reward points for Rs. 7,000 Amazon voucher from 18 Karat Gold Collection:
| Spends | Reward Points | Reward Rate | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | Bonus | Total | ||
| Rs. 20,000 * 12 = Rs. 2,40,000 | 4,800 | 24,000 | 28,800 | 4.66% |
| Rs. 6,000 * 12 = Rs. 72,000 | 1,440 | 12,000 | 13,440 | 7.24% |
As you can see from the table above, the reward rate is higher if you just spend Rs. 6,000 per month. However in this case you will need to pay the annual fees as you need to spend at least Rs. 1.5 Lakhs in a year for annual fee waiver. Also you will not be able to earn enough reward points to redeem from 18 Karat Gold Collection as at minimum it required 18,000 membership reward points. Hence I would suggest to spend Rs. 20,000 per month to maximize the benefit. Note that the reward rate can further be enhanced if you redeem for Taj or Tanishq vouchers.
However this is definitely bad news for those who just used to just spend Rs. 4,000 a month to get bonus 1,000 membership reward points. Now they need to spend Rs. 6,000 per month to get 1,000 bonus reward points.
Overall I liked this restructuring as Amex is providing more avenues to earn membership reward points. 4.66% reward rate is impressive and is even better than some of the premium credit cards available in India. I generally used to spend Rs. 1.5 Lakhs annually for fee waiver. I’ll now increase the annual spend to Rs. 2.4 Lakhs to get 12,000 more bonus reward points.
What do you think of this change by Amex for earning monthly bonus reward points? Are you planning to change your strategy to maximize benefits from Amex Membership Rewards Credit Card? Let me know in comments below.
