Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Amazon now lets you pay with Amex Membership Rewards points

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Amazon and American Express have launched ‘pay with points’ in the UK, a feature which has been available in the USA for some time.

It is a very simple arrangement:

You link your American Express account to your Amazon UK account via this page

When you come to pay for any future purchase on Amazon, Amazon will give you the option of using Membership Rewards points for payment

You will receive £4.50 for every 1,000 points redeemed

The good news is that it couldn’t be easier.

That said, some products are excluded –  digital goods (i.e.: MP3s), digital gift certificates (via email and print-at-home), Kindle eBooks and downloads, Subscribe and Save items.

The bad news is that you are not getting the best value for your points.

Let’s compare this with a few other options from the UK Membership Rewards catalogue:

Gift cards for Harrods, M&S, Starbucks etc – 0.5p per point

Gift cards for East Coast Trains – 0.6p per point

Avios or other airline miles – 0.75p – 1p if you use them well

Hotel points – 0.6p – 1p on my valuations depending on scheme (I rate Carlson points the highest)

The 0.45p value you get from Amazon is the same value you get from Tripflex, which is when you use your points to pay off travel charges on your statement.  It is still a better deal than using your points for general Amex statement credit which only gets you 0.4p.

So, overall, this is not a blockbuster deal.  It is a quick and simple way to use your points, though, and that may be enough for some people.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – January 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

Get a 10,000 points bonus plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback credit card

2% cashback on all your business spend for 3 months (1% thereafter) and no annual fee Read our full review

Comments (7)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JQ says:

    I’ve come to realise that a large proportion of Gold charge holders got it for the £100 amazon voucher that you can get with 20K MR.

    • Head for Points says:

      I am guessing that Amex gift cards will now be withdrawn as it wouldn’t make sense to offer those (at 0.5p per point) alongside this.

      It was actually Martin Lewis and moneysavingexpert.com who continually ‘pumped’ the Amex Gold on the basis that the sign-up bonus could be turned into £100 of Amazon vouchers. Unfortunately for Amex these would have been pretty poor long-term customers for them.

      • Sinizter says:

        Do you mean they make worse customers than those sign up, cash out the points to other options, cancel the card and get the pro-rata refund ?

        • Rob says:

          Every serious miles collector has an Amex card and spends heavily on it, most are high income business travellers. They are excellent lifetime customers.

          • Ralph says:

            Amex now gets 99% of my credit card spend, that wasn’t the case before I started this hobby so we are all winners 🙂

      • Duncan Stevenson says:

        In fairness, I signed up mostly for the free year and £100 Amazon voucher, but have been ‘sold’ by Amex’s service and the variety of deals that appear all the time in my account (statement credits, free App Store apps etc). None of these things are advertised to non-members.

        Maybe this is their plan – lure people in with a short-term incentive, but make them stay with a great cardmember experience and outstanding customer service.

  • Anon says:

    Pay with MasterCard and enter mcard5off for £5 off £10 at Amazon. Seems to allow you to use a giftcard balance too.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.