How could you spend 60,000 or 120,000 Amex Membership Rewards points?

UPDATE – JUNE 2023:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.  We produce a monthly directory of the top UK travel credit card offers – please click HERE or use the ‘Credit Cards’ menu above.  Thank you.

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American Express is currently running the biggest sign-up bonuses ever seen in the UK for a payment card.

Today, 30th March, is your last day to apply. You need some sort of small business activity to quality.

For the last two years, American Express has been setting new records for the biggest sign-up bonuses ever offered in the UK. Before they started this in 2021, the highest bonus I had ever seen in the previous 20 years was a short-lived 50,000 points offer on Platinum. Last year it offered a crazy 100,000 points on Business Platinum.

This new 120,000 points deal beats the 100,000 points offered last year. If you only sign up for one payment card mileage promotion all year, this should be it.

The number of points involved is huge. If you’re not a business owner so don’t qualify to apply yourself, you should think seriously about any family members who have their own business and could sign up – or do your business-owning friends a favour and tell them about it.

The bonuses are on the two American Express Business cards:

• American Express Business Platinum card (apply here)
• American Express Business Gold card (apply here)

American Express Business Platinum now has a sign-up bonus of 120,000 Membership Rewards points. This is paid in two parts.

American Express Business Gold – which is free for a year – now has a sign-up bonus of 60,000 Membership Rewards points. This is also paid in two parts.

These are, clearly, huge sums.

The offer is valid for applications received by tonight, 30th March 2023. You will still receive the bonus if you are not accepted immediately as long your application goes in today.

This HfP article has full details on the offer.

To help you decide if you want to apply, I thought we’d take a look at how you could use your full 120,000 bonus Membership Rewards points from Business Platinum. (You’ll have far more points than this, of course, since you will also earn points on your daily spending and will receive an extra bonus whenever you spend over £10,000 in a calendar month.)

This article is about how to make the best use of your Amex Membership Rewards points.  It does NOT cover every Membership Rewards redemption but it does cover the bulk of the pseudo-cash, cash and travel options. If we haven’t covered an option, you should assume that we don’t value it as highly as the options we have featured.

The American Express Membership Rewards website is here if you want to look for yourself at what is available.

This article (clicks) looks at all of the most valuable UK credit card sign up bonuses.

What are your 120,000 bonus points from American Express Business Platinum worth?

(If you choose to apply for Business Gold with the bonus of 60,000 points, simply halve the numbers below.)

0.75p – 1.5p per point, £900 – £1,800 (our target value)

Airline miles.  Our last piece on valuing Avios points is here and American Express Membership Rewards points transfer into Avios at 1:1.  This is why the sign-up bonuses are so valuable.

It is impossible to tie down a tighter range because of the number of different airline partners and the various ways (upgrade, long-haul, short-haul, economy, premium) you can redeem.  Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 to Avios, Virgin Points, Emirates Skywards, Etihad Guest, Cathay Pacific / Asia Miles, Delta SkyMiles, Finnair Plus, Flying Blue, Qantas Frequent Flyer and SAS EuroBonus. The transfer rate to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is 3:2.

My personal spreadsheet of the last 8.5 million Avios I have redeemed shows that I got an average value of 1.2p.  This is based on what I would personally have been prepared to pay for the flights I took, however, which may be far different from what you would have been prepared to pay.  My best redemptions far exceeded this.

1p per point, £1,200 (our target value)

Club Eurostar points.  We value a Club Eurostar point at 15p.  The 15:1 transfer rate into Club Eurostar means you are getting 1p per point.

Eurostar fares have gone up sharply since the pandemic and points now offer good value. Club Eurostar offers guaranteed availability – if there is a seat for cash, you can book it for points – which means that you are more likely to be redeeming onto peak trains which are peak priced for cash.

0.75p per point, £900 (my target value)

Marriott Bonvoy hotel transfers.  Amex points convert at 2:3 into the Marriott Bonvoy programme.  It is fairly easy to get 0.5p per Marriott Bonvoy point as we explain here.

0.5p per Marriott Bonvoy point means, at a 2:3 exchange rate from Membership Rewards, you should be getting 0.75p per Membership Rewards point.  You now have 30 hotel brands to redeem at, including Le Meridien, Sheraton, Westin, W, Marriott, Autograph, Design Hotels, The Luxury Collection, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis etc etc.

0.67p per point, £804 (guaranteed value)

Nectar points. In 2021, the supermarket loyalty scheme Nectar become a partner with British Airways Avios points. At the launch of the partnership, you could convert 50,000 Avios per month to Nectar, at a rate of 250 : 400. However, as of November last year, that rate has changed to 300 Avios = 400 Nectar points.

Because a Nectar point has a fixed value of 0.5p when spent at Sainsbury’s, eBay or Argos, it means that 1 Avios can be turned into 1.33 Nectar points worth 0.67p.

As long as you shop at Sainsbury’s, eBay or Argos, you can get 0.67p per Membership Rewards point, guaranteed.

To do this, you convert your American Express points to Avios and then transfer them to Nectar.

Before I go on …

You are guaranteed 0.67p per Membership Rewards point if you convert American Express points to Avios to Nectar.

All of the options below earn you less than 0.67p per point. You need to have a good reason to use any of the options below instead of Nectar. That said, if you know how to maximise the value of hotel points then Hilton can still be a decent option.

0.66p per point, £792 (my target value)

Hilton Honors hotel transfers.  Hilton has moved closer to a revenue-based redemption model in recent years, although you can get still outsized value at times.  Over time I have come to believe that 0.33p per point is a fair valuation for a Hilton Honors point.  The conversion rate is 1:2 to Hilton which is how I get to 0.66p per Amex point.  Hilton brands include Conrad, Waldorf Astoria and Hampton.

0.6p per point, £720 (my target value)

Radisson Rewards hotel transfers. 

Radisson Rewards in the UK covers Radisson Blu, Radisson RED, Radisson Edwardian, Park Inn and Park Plaza. Following recent changes, one Radisson Rewards point is worth roughly 0.2p off the cash cost of your next booking. There is no longer a reward chart.

The conversion rate is 1 Amex point to 3 Radisson Rewards points so you’re getting 0.6p of hotel discount, give or take, for every Amex point you convert.

0.5p per point, £600 (guaranteed)

Retailer gift cards – Starbucks, M&S, Harrods etc.

0.5p per point, £600 (guaranteed)

The value of a Nectar point, given that you can redeem Amex points for Nectar points at a 1:1 ratio.  It would not be logical to do this, however, given that you get 30% more value by transferring American Express to Avios to Nectar as we explained above.

0.45p per point, £540 (guaranteed)

Redeeming for American Express statement credit at 0.45p per Membership Rewards point you cash in.

Conclusion

There is real value, potentially well over £1,200-worth, in the 120,000 American Express Membership Rewards points you would receive as a sign-up bonus on the American Express Business Platinum card.

This assumes that you qualify for the bonus and meet the target of spending £12,000 in three months and retain the card for 14 months.

Even better (depending on your view of paying an annual fee) is the potential £600+ of value from the 60,000 points you would get with the ‘free for a year’ American Express Business Gold.

You can apply for the American Express Business Platinum card here.

You can apply for the American Express Business Gold card here.

You must apply today, Thursday 30th March, to get these special bonuses.

Applications which are not accepted immediately will still qualify as long as the initial application is made by tonight.