You earn Amex points by making purchases with an American Express Membership Rewards card. These points can be redeemed for a wide variety of redemptions, including transfers to more than 20 airline and hotel partners and booking travel with Amex Travel. Each redemption option has a different point value — ranging from 0.6 cents per point for statement credits to 1 cent per point when redeemed for Amex Travel or certain gift card redemptions. Point transfers to airline and hotel partners generally offer the highest value return for your Membership Rewards points.
Points earned from eligible American Express cards are automatically pooled into one account. You don’t need to manually transfer them between accounts — as you need to do with Chase points. If you have a small business, the Membership Rewards points from your linked personal and business cards also pool into one account.
Membership Rewards redemption options
- Transfer strategically to the right travel partner: ~2 cents
- Get a flight, hotel, car rental, vacation package or cruise through the Membership Rewards portal: 0.7 – 1 cent
- Use Amex points on Amazon.com: 0.7 cent
- Redeem points for gift cards: 0.5 – 1 cents
- Redeem points for statement credits: 0.6 cents
- Buy merchandise with points: 0.5 cents
- Donate points to charity: 1 cent
Amex Membership Rewards cards
American Express issues the following consumer and small business cards that earn Membership Rewards points:
The information related to the American Express® Green Card, Business Green Rewards Card from American Express, Amex EveryDay® Credit Card from American Express and Amex EveryDay® Preferred Credit Card from American Express has been independently collected by LendingTree and has not been reviewed or provided by the issuer of this card prior to publication.
To boost your overall Membership Rewards earning rate, consider getting more than one Amex card and optimizing your spend between the two (or more) cards. For example, you can use The Platinum Card® from American Express to earn 5x points on directly booked airfare and the Amex EveryDay® Credit Card from American Express to earn 2x points at U.S. supermarkets.
American Express travel partners
American Express Membership Rewards can be transferred to more than 20 airline and hotel partner programs — including Delta SkyMiles, JetBlue TrueBlue, Hilton Honors, and Marriott Bonvoy. Points transfer to most partners on a 1:1 basis, but not all miles and points are equally valuable. In some cases, you’ll receive a much higher value by selecting one transfer partner over another.
American Express offers periodic transfer promotions for which you’ll receive bonus rewards when transferring to select partners. These bonuses can stretch your Membership Rewards further, reducing the number of points you need to transfer to book an award flight or hotel reservation.
Also, keep in mind that point transfers are permanent. Once you transfer points to a partner, you cannot reverse that transfer.