Amazon.com is the largest online retailer in the US. Since almost all its transactions occur online, payments must be made electronically, usually with a credit or debit card. Banks have lined up to partner with Amazon to allow cardholders to spend their reward points toward purchases from the website.
Here’s what points are worth when redeemed on Amazon.
- AMEX Membership Rewards – 0.7 cents per point
- Citi ThankYou – 0.8 cents per point
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 0.8 cents per point
- Capital One – 0.8 cents per point
Discover is different because it’s a cash-back card, but you can use your Discover cashback 1:1 for Amazon purchases.
In July 2022, Bilt Rewards added the ability to pay with your Bilt points at Amazon.com. With a valuation of 0.7 cents, I’m not going to use my points this way when I could transfer them to American, United or Hyatt instead.
However, I added my Bilt Mastercard to my Amazon.com account to take advantage of the double points on rent day promotion (more later on how that worked out). It took a few days, but eventually I received an email from Amazon to link my card to enable Shop with Points.
There was one difference. This time it was offered as an option that I could accept or deny with a click, instead of being automatically enrolled like what happened with my AMEX cards.
Amazon previously added a 15-day period to choose if you wanted to enroll your card but it was hidden in the fine print for my AMEX cards.
This may be a difference between AMEX and Bilt’s contracts with Amazon. However, there’s a big difference between automatically enrolling cardholders to asking if they want to enroll a card in Shop with Points.
You’re probably already enrolled if you’ve received an email like this one and ignored it. If so, you can go to Amazon’s Shop with Points website and remove your card. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the setting to “Apply by default.”
l thought Amazon’s approach of automatically enrolling cards and forcing you to remove them was a heavy-handed way to get people to use the program. Who knows how many of the “millions of customers” wanted to use points to pay for purchases and how many did so without their knowledge?
I’m glad Amazon is now transparent about the program and allows people to deny automatic enrollment with a single click.
You’d sometimes want to enable Shop with Points to take advantage of bonus offers. But for everyday purchases, don’t use your points to pay for shopping on Amazon.
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