The American Express Business Platinum Card currently refunds 50% of your Membership Rewards points when you use their Pay with Points feature. This benefit gives you an effective value of 2 cents per MR point.
Starting June 1, 2017, this refund will be reduced to 35%, reducing the effective value of MR points to 1.538 cents per point. There will also be a new cap of 500,000 points rebated per year. In most cases, MR points will be best used for transfers to airline partners, which is how it was before this benefit was added.
Discussion
Any flights booked prior to June 1, 2017 will continue to receive the 50% rebate, even if you are flying at a later date.
The amount of time it takes for the rebate to post is also being increased, though we currently don’t know by how much.
New cardholders (including those who have upgraded from another type of card) who applied between October 6, 2016 and May 31, 2017, will still receive the old benefits (50% rebate, no cap) for one year from the date their cards were issued.