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Jumeirah One disappears as a redemption from Amex International Currency Cards

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American Express has, for many years, issued two cards for anyone globally who would prefer to bank in US$ or Euros rather than their home currency. This includes UK residents.

These cards are known as International Currency Cards, with the individual cards known as the International Dollar Card (IDC) and International Euro Card (IEC).  Each is available in Green, Gold and Platinum versions.  The cards are run from Brighton which is very convenient if you have any issues.

Jumeirah One disappears from American Express International Currency Cards

There was no sign-up bonus for the Gold or Green card.  However, the Platinum International Currency Card offered a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points. This was very handy, because you could get this bonus irrespective of any other American Express cards you held. It would also not impact your future applications for UK cards.

The key upside was that the International Currency Cards have different Membership Rewards partners. These include Jumeirah One, Qatar Privilege Club (less useful now that Qatar has adopted Avios) and Malaysia Airlines. They also retain a 1:1 conversion rate with Singapore Airlines which beats the 3:2 rate offered by the UK programme.

Unfortunately, Amex has recently taken the International Currency Cards off the market. If you don’t have one, you’re not getting one.

If you DO have one, one of the benefits seems to have gone. Jumeirah One has disappeared as a transfer partner.

10 years ago this was the greatest deal around. Jumeirah resorts in the Middle East are ludicrously expensive but you could pick them up with a points transfer. I was getting 3p-4p of value per Amex point.

Sadly Jumeirah One went revenue based. Each point is now worth around 1.5p, so the 4:1 transfer from American Express ICC Membership Rewards became pretty pathetic. Plenty of transfer partners offered far more value, especially Singapore Airlines with its 1:1 transfer rate.

I am tempted to shut down my ICC card entirely. Even retaining the ability to transfer to Singapore Airlines at 1:1 isn’t necessarily worth the annual fee.

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Category

American Express Membership Rewards

Comments (46)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Louie says:
    17 Feb17 February 04:58

    Thanks Tim 🙂

  • Jan M says:
    17 Feb17 February 07:06

    I miss Europcar’s one pound rental in the UK. 😔 Best way of getting to Heathrow from South Wales.

    • Londonsteve says:
      21 Feb21 February 11:02

      Me too. I wonder why it’s no longer Europcar’s while. I’m fairly sure they’re keeping cars for longer due to the higher input cost of a replacement car, not to mention delivery delays for new cars so there will be fewer cars going back to base to be collected by the manufacturer. But still, some will and someone’s got to take them there.

  • Alan says:
    17 Feb17 February 07:55

    Really love the maps, used them in Sydney a few weeks ago – thanks so much for doing these, Tim!

  • Paul says:
    17 Feb17 February 08:00

    Is there a definitive list of restaurants that leave. I was caught out last year booking some way ahead only to find the restaurants had been removed from the offer by the time the bill was paid. Even Amex staff couldn’t tell me when.

    • Tim Rogers says:
      17 Feb17 February 08:11

      Tim here – the map man. This is a great idea – and something that has been in the back of my mind. I’ll figure out a way to add recent deletions to the site.

    • Tim Rogers says:
      17 Feb17 February 13:09

      Following your feedback, I’ve made some changes to the site so that we now show deleted restaurants at the bottom of the list, cross them out, and tell you when they were removed. I’ll look at adding some kind of news feed too.

  • Lux says:
    17 Feb17 February 08:06

    Like you I’m minded to close my ICC card. It was handy when I had lots of USD spend, and in the past I’ve used it as a way to park MR points whilst waiting for a new UK application, but the exchange rate makes that poor value too.

    Oh well. The miles world moves on.

  • The other Kevin says:
    17 Feb17 February 08:16

    Did Tim sell Reward Flight Finder before or after the scraping scandal?

  • Andrew. says:
    17 Feb17 February 08:38

    Like the Dining Map.

    When you click on Washington though, it displays the map of Washington State, but lists restaurants in Washington DC.

  • James Baxter says:
    17 Feb17 February 08:40

    Iberia has launched an Avios sale (the points can be moved to your BAEC a/c). At the top end it’s 150K + 75K bonus = 225K for EUR 2705 (£2414).

    1.07p/ Avios.

    Easy way to buy a big chunk for a little over 1p/ Avios.

    • yonasl says:
      17 Feb17 February 09:00

      With the new Avios based on price of ticket this may be the only way now to get Avios with Iberia.

    • Jonathan says:
      17 Feb17 February 11:05

      I’m sure the HfP team have got something written (or writing) about it !

      • James Baxter says:
        17 Feb17 February 16:54

        Usually BA offer similar deals to Iberia – not always – but you could in that case get both.

        With partner – 450K Avios @ 1p (just Iberia).

        BAEC & Iberia – 900K Avios.

        With kids – sky’s the limit.

        Not everybody would want (say) £10K of liability sitting there. waiting for a devaluation. But if you have various flying goals in mind, it’s easy to get more than 1.07p value per Avios point.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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