In September 2022, AMEX launched a pilot program that allowed cardmembers to round up charges and give the extra money to charity. In March of 2023, we received an invitation from AMEX to enroll with Philanthropi. From there, we could create an “Impact Account” from which we could direct the round-up money from our AMEX card transactions to one of their charity partners.
At the time I enrolled in the program to see how it worked but I never ended up donating any money. That’s because there were only a limited number of partner charities you could give to through Philanthropi, and I’d rather pick a charity to donate to instead of being limited to a number of hand-picked organizations.
I just received an email saying that AMEX was ending the partnership with Philanthropi.
We’re writing to let you know that American Express is discontinuing the Amex Round-Up™ pilot. This means that starting on September 8, 2023, your transactions will no longer be rounded up on the Card you selected and sent to your Philanthropi Impact Account™.
If you’d like to unenroll your Card before September 8, 2023, you can do so at any time on Philanthropi’s site by selecting “Settings”, “Funding Sources”, and then “Disconnect” on the Round-Up funding source.
All round-ups before your unenrollment or pilot end date will still be charged to your Card and sent to Philanthropi.
Once the pilot ends or you unenroll, you’ll no longer be able to access your prior round-up history through the Amex Round-Up hub. However, you’ll still be able to see those charges on your statements. After unenrollment, Philanthropi will be responsible for providing access to your Impact Account which holds all your previous contributions made via Amex Round-Up.
I assume the ending date of September 8th is one year from when the pilot program launched and AMEX found that not enough members were interested in the program to make it worthwhile. I’m not sure if it even made it through the pilot phase of the promotion.
I’m glad to see AMEX try to incentivize charitable donations but this wasn’t the way to do it. I’d rather see them make donations a bonus category or say that charges to non-profits will not incur any transaction charges. That would be putting their money where their mouth is.
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