American Express in Canada is one of the more valuable transferrable currencies as the conversion ratio to Aeroplan and British Airways is 1:1. However, Membership Rewards can be redeemed for merchandise, gift certificates, as well as a rebate on travel purchased with the card in the form of a statement credit. American Express calls this Tripflex, which is only available with their charge cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

Right now, there’s a promotion for American Express Tripflex, in which your points will get you 1.25 cents in value. I received this bonus for both of the American Express Canada Platinum cards I manage. I’m not sure whether Gold Card accounts have this promotion but be sure to check. This ends April 30, which means today is the last day for this promotion. That means 1,000 points will get you a $12.50 rebate instead of the regular $10 rebate. This is a 25% bonus. I feel this was unadvertised as I completely missed it just until a few hours ago.

Accessing the American Express Tripflex Promotion

You can access this promotion when selecting “use points for eligible purchases.”

This will bring you to the screen which shows you the increased rate for American Express Tripflex.

You can select how many points you want to redeem for the award on a slider screen.

This promotion isn’t currently displayed on the Membership Rewards website and only shows up when you redeem your points.

American Express Tripflex Worth It?

I would say this is one of the better non-airline transfer redemptions since with the promotion you can get at least 1.25 cents per mile. Generally, in most cases, it would be preferable to transfer to Aeroplan or Avios, as you can probably extract more than 1 cent per mile value on the redemptions with the airline miles. However, I currently have travel booked up through the next 11 months, as well as fairly significant amounts of Aeroplan and Avios. So I’ve actually moved a bit of my Membership Rewards Stash through the promotion. I feel that it’s better to redeem rather than just hoard and potentially let your points devalue.

It certainly will differ with your situation. I’d say in nearly all cases, you can get at least 1.25 cents from your Aeroplan/Avios redemption if not more. So I think if you do need Aeroplan or Avios, you should hold your MR points until you need to transfer them over. However, if you have no need at all for Avios or Aeroplan (or any other currencies that MR transfers to), then it might be a good option to cash out the points, as long as you have qualifying travel purchases. The promotion does end today, so if you do want to do an American Express Tripflex redemption you better hurry before the rate goes back down to 1 cent.

The two cards which earn MR points in Canada is the American Express Gold Card, which currently comes with a waived annual fee and a 25,000 points signup bonus. The other is the American Express Platinum Card which earns 60,000 Membership Rewards Points. I currently don’t have the Gold Card (although I’ve had it before) and I probably will be apply for it again in the next six months. Right now I’m a few months away from renewing my Platinum card and I’m definitely weighing the benefits of the card against the steep $699 annual fee. I wrote this post on whether the American Express Platinum Card might be worth it for you.

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