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Pretty much any savvy travel points collector will make use of an Amex card (we tend to recommend the Amex Gold card) as a way of picking up Membership Rewards points, convertible to a number of loyalty scheme points, on everyday spend.

While the best value for Membership Rewards points does tend to be in exchanging them for other miles and points (eg Avios at 1:1), they can also be used towards a “statement credit” – that is, paying off your Amex spend using Membership Rewards points.

Sounds great

Yes it does. The problem is, the value isn’t so good. You will get exactly 0.45p per point by doing this. That’s pretty poor value when you consider that prevailing wisdom values many loyalty points (which you can exchange Membership Rewards points on a 1:1 basis for) at around 1 pence each.

The 20% Bonus

To give a little boost to the dubious value above, from today until 10pm GMT on Sunday 31 March 2019, you will get a bonus of 20% when using Membership Rewards points for a statement credit. So, rather than the meagre 0.45p per point, you’ll get a slightly healthier 0.54p per point.

How it works

The offer is very well organised. Simply log-in and click on the “Use points for purchases” tab on the Amex homepage:

You then just select those purchases you wish to be covered by your Membership Rewards points, with a minimum spend of 1,000 Membership Rewards points required:

Should you take this offer up?

The good news is this is basically hard cash for your Membership Rewards points. In case you are in any doubt, cash does tend to be one of the more flexible spending options. That said, for every Membership Reward point you convert to cash, you’re missing the opportunity to convert it to an Avios point at 1:1, or a Hilton Honors point at a ratio of 2 Hilton Honors points per Membership Rewards point.

To give it some context, if you offered any member of the InsideFlyer editorial team Avios points at 0.54p each, or Hilton points at 0.27p each, they are likely to take you up on it.

So, I’d still probably give this one a miss, but if you do have a huge stash of Membership Rewards points, and simply no way of using them well, this is an opportunity to cash them out with some added value.