One feature that is specific to the American Express Business Platinum card (which does not exist on the consumer version) is a pay-with-points rebate. When using points to pay for airfare on the airline you have chosen for your airline incidental fee rebate, you initially get 1c per point in value for your Membership Rewards points, but you get a 35% rebate, up to one million rebated points per year. That rebate officially takes 6 to 10 weeks to post, but I have used the benefit a number of times this week and have found the rebate to be posting much faster. I’m not yet sure whether this is a change in the process or just a lucky happenstance.
I recently wrote about our intention to use my wife’s Amex Membership Rewards points to pay for a significant chunk of JetBlue flights in our quest to complete JetBlue’s 25 for 25 promotion, earning 1.4 million JetBlue points and Mosaic 1 status for 25 years for my family of four.
Then, I realized that we had closed my wife’s last Business Platinum card a few months ago. We decided to upgrade a Business Gold card to a Business Platinum card in order to make use of the pay-with-points rebate as well as a few other card coupon credits over the next few months.
We upgraded her card a few days ago and quickly began putting the points to use to book flights. I had anticipated that we wouldn’t be able to use her points for maximum value in booking at least the first few weeks of our flights because I knew that once we depleted her current stock of points, we would be left waiting for at least 4 to 6 weeks for the rebated points to post (the official timeline listed in the benefit terms is actually 6 to 10 weeks).
I was very pleasantly surprised yesterday when I realized that points had already been rebated for flight bookings I had made exactly one day prior! As you can see in the screen shot above, we redeemed points for several flights on Thursday and received the airline bonus rebated points on Friday — the next calendar day.
That was a great surprise as it makes the benefit far more useful to me. In the past, we’ve used this benefit a number of times since it yields just north of 1.5c per point in value, but the annoyance has always been tying up those rebated points for weeks at a time.
I don’t yet know whether this is a widespread change or my wife got lucky with a one-off quick-turnaround rebate, but we certainly won’t complain. I would love to see the processing time for this benefit improve to next day across the board.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
This has been the norm since at least Nov 2024. It’s a shame Amex is gutting this benefit in September, but yes, as Nick says (same as Amex reps are quick to defend the change) the 35% rebate will only work for your chosen airline after mid September.
That’s great to see. I remember when it was first rolled out it was pretty quick to rebate as well. I remember when it was 50% though and not 35%. I booked so many flights when it was 50% just booking on whatever fit best for schedule and price in First. Those were the days.
The degradation of this benefit took the marginal value of the card and stomped on it. I will be canceling it unless their “refresh” somehow introduces something that they’re unlikely to introduce.
To emphasize to anyone who glossed over the memo: the 35% rebate will be ending. And, when it’s gone, it’s hard to imagine someone redeeming for 1cpp.
Not true. It will be unchanged for your chosen airline. The only change is that it will no longer be valid for business and first class flights on any airline – it’ll only work on your chosen airline starting in mid-september.
Thanks for sharing this Nick. My timeline is exactly the same and was also pleasantly surprised. Booked flights on July 10th and got the rebate next day on July 11th. Funny I thought I missed out on this because I accidentally used my personal platinum card but still got it. Not sure if that’s the norm but I always thought you had to checkout and pay for the flight with the Business platinum card to get the rebate
This is definirptely the new normal, have booked many tix in past two months and rebates always back within 72 hrs, usually much sooner
Yes, I have done several bookings across multiple Business Plat cards across multiple ppl and they all have been posting within 1-2 days of charge confirmation.
This was one of my pet peeves when using the Pay with Points feature. I wonder if the points post shortly after the 24 hour mark for flight bookings, after the free cancellation period ends.