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Hello all,
Devastating news for me, AmEx have announced the above is being discontinued from April 9th. We used this with our business to generate millions of points per year. I also found the rate to be competitive. The standard (1 point per £20) will remain but the removal of this means I’m going to have to try and find some other way of collecting large numbers of points.
For short term maximisation, can personal card holders sign up to this or does it need to be a business card? Might need to make some USD transactions shortly
I never knew how popular this programme was with readers until today. Plenty of emails arrived from people earning six figure sums each year.
I did a “modest” 100k/year for the last two years.
I’ve had several phone calls in the last six months asking why I’m not using it. I guess this was the final push before the plug was pulled…
For short term maximisation, can personal card holders sign up to this or does it need to be a business card? Might need to make some USD transactions shortly
Sadly I doubt they’re taking new customers at this point.
I never knew how popular this programme was with readers until today. Plenty of emails arrived from people earning six figure sums each year.
If it was 6 figures I wouldn’t mind. However we manufacture overseas (and pay in USD) so we’re talking multiples of that. AmEx got a fee (minimum 1%) on top of their FX margin so I’m not sure why they have done this, unless they’re going to increase the fee and then reintroduce it.
Easiest way I’ve ever had to generate a significant amount of points, while also mitigating corporation tax.
Our account manager just called me and apparently they have been deluged by complaints about this. I was told it was a decision that came from head office in the US but all complaints are being noted and passed up the chain of command.
I don’t know how much AmEx makes on FX but we’ll likely move our spend to another provider. Last year we put over £4m through the service, so probably relatively small fry.
Another gutted FXIP customer here. Like Guy we work with a number of manufacturers abroad and have been putting similarly large sums through their currency service for several years. It’s a huge blow, partly because we won’t be earning points at the same rate in the future, but also because we were offsetting our corporation tax by paying the higher FX transfer fees associated with the rewards programme (around 1% of the currency value rather than the usual £10 fixed fee I think).
I actually called our account manager yesterday to double check I’d interpreted the email correctly as I couldn’t quite believe it could be accurate. According to our account manager there are no current plans to replace the service with anything else that is comparable.If anyone has any recommendations for alternative currency transfer programmes that would allow us to earn points at a similar rate I’d love to hear them.
Wondering whether it is worth going down the corporate card route and setting up Accessline? It seems to offer the same sort of rewards (though the amount you can pay is linked to credit limit which is an issue).
Wondering whether it is worth going down the corporate card route and setting up Accessline? It seems to offer the same sort of rewards (though the amount you can pay is linked to credit limit which is an issue).
Thanks for this recommendation! I’ve dropped our account manager an email to see how feasible this might be but it looks like the credit limit could be a possible issue.
In the meantime I’m going to double bubble it (it’s AmEx’s fault for giving us such a low limit) and pay off our £50k limit using the FXIP process every few days so will get 100k points each time I do it… Duncan – let me know what your account manager says!
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