Amex credit cards are among the most versatile credit cards in India. I have been using Amex credit cards for almost a decade now. It started with Amex MRCC and later on, I took the Amex Plat Travel credit card. Very recently, I also took the Amex Gold Charge card. The reward rate for me on my Amex credit cards has been phenomenal so far. All thanks to the excellent Amex reward program combined with many offers that Amex brings at regular intervals. In this post, I will discuss about the Amex Trifecta, and how the Trifecta can give you close to a 6% reward rate on nearly every spend. Further, I will discuss how to value MR points and their conversion rates. Lastly, I will also discuss how to maximize your reward rate on Amex credit cards.
Amex Credit Cards
Amex Trifecta India
Amex Trifecta is a strategy where you combine 3 Amex credit cards to maximize your reward rate. While in the US, the Amex Trifecta involves the Amex Platinum card, Amex Gold card, and the Amex Blue credit card. Here in India, the Amex trifecta involves the Amex Platinum Travel card, the Amex Gold charge card, and the Amex MRCC credit card.
Using the Amex credit cards, you can earn ~100k MR points in the very first year on spending 7.12lk. That’s a whopping 7% reward rate. For all these, you need to pay just 1000 as an annual fee for the first year. From the second year, you can still get over 90k reward points.
Here is how the Amex Trifecta works:
Amex Membership Rewards Credit Card (MRCC)
A detailed review of the card is here. Briefly, use the card to spend 20k in a month. Within this 20k spend, ensure that you do 4 transactions of 1.5k each. That’s all. You get 1K MR points for doing 4*1.5k transactions. Another 1k for spending 20k in a month. In addition, you get 400 regular MR points (1MR point for every 50 spent). Thus overall, you get 2400MR points every month and 28800 MR points in a year.
💡 Ensure that you enrol for the 1K MR points offer against 20k spent in a month.
💡 Apply for Amex MRCC only using a referral link. If applied directly, the second-year fee is 4500, but if applied through a referral link the second-year fee is just 1500.
Amex Gold Charge Card
A detailed review of the Amex Gold Charge card is here. To take benefit from this card, use this card for 6 transactions of 1k each, every month. That’s all. You get 1K bonus MR points and 120 regular MR points, a total of 1120MR points every month, translating into 13440MR points annually.
💡 Moving abroad? If you own an Amex credit card here in India for over a year and happen to settle abroad. You can apply for an Amex credit card in that country as soon as you land. Amex considers your repayment record and the credit behaviour of your home country to issue you a new credit card.
Amex Platinum Travel Card
Read the detailed review of the Amex Platinum Travel credit card. To make the most out of the Amex Plat Travel credit card, you have to spend 4lk in a year on this card. For this, you get 40K bonus MR points, 8k regular MR points and a Taj Voucher worth 10k. Thus, on spending 4lk, you get 48k MR points and a 10k Taj voucher.
Unlike the monthly milestones in Amex MRCC and Amex Gold card, Amex Plat Travel has spend-based milestones. This makes the card ideal for those bulky spends that we have during the festive season or financial year end, la insurance spends.
💡 One needs to call the customer care to convert the milestone reward points on spending 1.9lk and 4lk into regular reward points. The process is not automated.
So that’s the Amex credit cards trifecta from an Indian perspective. In summary, you can earn over a 6% reward rate by using the Amex credit cards after paying the annual fees. Below is the table to summarise the reward rates.
However, there is a downside to this strategy. The annual fees from these 3 cards from the second year onwards to substantial, close to 13k combined for the 3 cards. You can always redeem your points and cancel the cards before the annual fees are levied. Nonetheless, do take into account the annual fees before taking a plunge into the Amex trifecta.
How do you value Amex points?
Before getting into a few ways to maximize your Amex reward rate, let’s clear the air about valuing your Amex MR points. Amex credit cards being one of the versatile credit cards, offer multiple options to redeem your reward points. Thus, the value of your reward points varies significantly depending on the option you choose.
Below is a table that shows the value of your MR points depending on the option you choose.
Pay with points:
The quickest option is to choose “Pay with Points” or “Statement Credit”. Since this is the quickest, obviously gives the lowest value, just 25p per MR point. However, the list of places where you can pay with points is very big and includes Amazon, BigBasket, many electricity boards airlines etc.
Taj vouchers
Taj vouchers are one popular choice for redeeming your Amex credit card points. The MR points in the Amex Plat Travel credit card can be redeemed at the rate of 50p for Taj vouchers. The MR points in Amex MRCC and Gold Charge card can be redeemed in a block of 24k points against 14k Taj vouchers (conversion rate of 58p). One can get Taj vouchers worth 57k using the 3 Amex credit cards discussed here. A 6.5% reward rate!
Insta vouchers
Amex credit cards also have Insta vouchers, where you can redeem MR points for vouchers. They as such offer very mediocre reward points of 25paisa. However, there are a few hidden gems here. For eg, Gir Jungle Safari with Stay voucher for the Postcard hotel is available for 90k points. A redemption value of ~80p. Effectively, the Amex trifecta credit cards can give you a 2-night stay at the Postcard Gir with a private lion safari during the stay, a reward rate of ~10%. How’s that for redemption?
Marriott Bonvoy
Marriott is a popular transfer option for the Amex MR points. I have personally transferred my Amex MR points to Marriott and redeemed them for ~80p redemption during my vacation in Mauritius. Further, using Marriott as a transfer partner, you can then transfer your points to over 30 airlines the world over. I have made a tool that allows you to see the conversion rates of these partners here. Thus, transferring your Amex credit card points to Marriott opens up a plethora of options for you.
Airline Transfer Partners
Did you know that the 48k MR points you earn on the Amex Plat Travel credit card in a year are almost sufficient for a return flight to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific? This is when you transfer your MR points to Asia Miles and book your flight using the same.
Similarly, you can get a return ticket to London on Virgin Atlantic using 40k MR points earned on the Amex MRCC and Amex Gold charge cards. The redemption rate comes at 60p for 1 MR point. Here too, you need to transfer your MR points to Virgin Atlantic FFP and book the flight accordingly.
In conclusion, the value of Amex MR points varies anywhere between 25 paise to INR1. However, the average and median values of the redemption table mentioned above come at 45-46. Thus, it’s safe to take a redemption value of 50p for calculation purposes.
How to maximize the Amex credit card reward rate?
Below are a few ways to maximize the reward rate on the Amex credit cards.
Amex Reward Multiplier
The Amex Reward Multiplier program is the Amex equivalent of the famous HDFC SmartBuy platform or the Axis GiftEdge platform. Depending on the Amex credit card, you get varying multiplier points on this platform. Many popular marketplaces and websites are part of this platform which includes Flipkart, MMT, Myntra, Apple etc.
Amex Gyftr Portal
The Amex Gyftr portal again very similar to the HDFC SmartBuy Gyftr portal, allows you to buy numerous gift vouchers. This includes the most popular AmazonPay vouchers, Amazon Shopping vouchers, Taj, MMT etc. This portal even includes the BPCL fuel vouchers. Here get 2x MR points for the Amex MRCC, 3x MR points for the Amex Plat Travel and a whopping 5x on the Amex Gold Charge credit card.
To maximise your reward rate, use the Amex MRCC to purchase the vouchers worth 20k. Do this in 4 transactions i.e. 4 transactions of 5k each. Thus, you will end up with 2800 reward points valued at 1400 i.e. a 7% reward rate on the 20k spent.
Similarly, use the Amex Gold charge card to purchase vouchers worth 6k in 6 transactions, i.e. 6 transactions of 1k each. You will end with 1600 MR points worth 800 on spending of 6k. A whopping 13.3% reward rate.
AmazonPay vouchers
AmazonPay vouchers on the Amex Gyftr portal are a great way to achieve monthly/annual spending milestones on Amex credit cards. You can use AmazonPay vouchers to pay for nearly everything. This includes electricity bills, phone bills, insurance premiums, and school fees. Further, you can pay for Ola, Uber rides, Zomato/Swiggy orders etc. You can buy a maximum of 25k Amazon vouchers in a month on the Amex Gyftr portal.
Further, there are some caps on using AmazonPay balance. Such as you can only pay 5 electricity bills/insurance premiums in a month using AmazonPay balance. There are some more restrictions, but they are just to avoid commercial exploitation of these vouchers. The FAQs are here. I have never faced any issues using the AmazonPay balance for my regular spending.
Fuel purchase
As such the Amex credit cards (Gold charge gives) don’t give reward points for fuel purchases. However, the fuel purchases are counted towards the monthly and annual spending milestones. Thus, for example, if you use the Amex MRCC for fuel purchases and your total monthly spending, including other spends, reaches 20k, you will get 2k bonus MR points, which is a 5% reward rate.
Similarly, if you use the Amex Gold charge card, for 6 transactions of 1k each you get a 13.3% reward rate even on the fuel spends.
Another way to maximize your reward rate is to buy the BPCL vouchers from the Amex Gyftr portal. The only issue is the availability of these vouchers is patchy. They are not available many times. Otherwise, it’s a great way to use your Amex credit cards for fuel purchases.
Conclusion
Amex credit cards especially the Amex trifecta of Amex MRCC, Amex Gold charge and the Amex Platinum Travel card when used in tandem can be very rewarding credit cards with a reward rate of over 6%. However, the acceptability of Amex is somewhat of a challenge. Further, the relatively high fee from the second year onwards is something one must take into account before taking the plunge into the Amex ecosystem.
Photo courtesy: Kumiko SHIMIZU on Unsplash
The post was written/updated in Feb-2024.
Disclaimer
In the interest of full disclosure, Credit Cardz may earn a referral bonus for anyone that’s approved through some of the links in this post. However, opinions and views expressed here are of the author's alone and not those of the bank, credit card issuer, or anyone else and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.
