Link: Sign-up for a Rakuten account with a best-ever $50 bonus
In this post, I’d like to recap my favorite way of earning Amex Membership Rewards points that doesn’t involve credit cards. I’m talking about the ability to earn Amex points for online shopping through Rakuten, and that’s also why Rakuten is my favorite online shopping portal. I’d also like to compare it to the ability to earn Bilt Rewards points through Rakuten, since that’s still a fairly new opportunity.
Regardless of how you choose to be rewarded, this is the ideal time to sign-up, given the best-ever bonus for new members.
Online shopping portals can be a great way to pick up additional miles & points for purchases you’d make anyway. Just for following a specific link, you can earn bonus points or cash back in addition to the rewards you’d earn for credit card spending.
Whenever I make an online purchase, I always check to see which shopping portal has the best bonus. Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates) is one of the largest online shopping portals, and also my absolute favorite, both thanks to the great interface it offers, and more importantly, thanks to the ability to earn Amex Membership Rewards points, which offers disproportionate value. In this post, I’ll take a closer look at how that works.
Rakuten offers the ability to earn Amex Membership Rewards points in lieu of cash back for online shopping. This feature is available to anyone who has an Amex card that earns Membership Rewards points.
This isn’t just great because some of us would rather save up toward our next travel adventure rather than get cash, but it’s also great because of how it offers outsized value. While there are some airline-specific shopping portals, being able to earn a transferable points currency for online shopping gives you so much more flexibility.
Should you earn Amex points with Rakuten?
With Rakuten you can earn one Amex Membership Rewards point in lieu of one cent cash back. In other words, if a retailer is offering 10% cash back, you’d instead earn 10 Membership Rewards points per dollar, which is incredible.
Personally I value Membership Rewards points at 1.7 cents each, so to me that increases the value of the rewards by 70%, since I can get a lot more value with one Amex point than with one cent.
How should you decide whether you’re better off earning cash back or Amex points?
Just to give an example, you could transfer 57,500 Amex points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, and then redeem for a one-way first class class ticket on All Nippon Airways from Tokyo to Honolulu, assuming you can find availability.
Given that your opportunity cost is one cent per Amex point, that’s like “paying” $575 to earn the miles for such a ticket, when it would cost more than 10x as much if paying cash.
How to register to earn Amex points with Rakuten
How do you actually register to earn Amex Membership Rewards points rather than cash back through Rakuten? First of all, you’ll want to sign-up for a Rakuten account, and you’ll want to do that through a refer-a-friend link, so that you get a bonus for your first purchase.
Once you have an account, the process of converting your account to earning Amex points rather than cash back is easy. Log into your account, and click on the “Account Settings” section.
You’ll then see a section asking how you want to be paid, and select the third option, which is “American Express.”
You’ll then get to a screen confirming this is what you want to do.
You’ll then be asked to log into the Amex account with which you want to earn Membership Rewards points (this has to be a US account that is enrolled to earn Membership Rewards points).
And that’s it! You should then see that your account reflects that you’re earning Amex points.
Going forward, you should see that the rewards section of your account shows your earnings totals both in terms of cash back and Amex points.
There are a few things to note about earning Amex Membership Rewards points through Rakuten:
- Even after making the switch with your earnings preference, the rewards you see with retailers will continue to show cash back, but will automatically be converted into points
- Existing rewards earned won’t be converted into Amex points, but rather this preference will just be applied to purchases going forward
- You don’t actually have to pay with an Amex card in order to earn Amex points through Rakuten; you can pay with any credit card
Should you earn Amex or Bilt points with Rakuten?
Historically, Amex has been the only partner that lets you earn points for purchases with Rakuten. However, Rakuten also recently launched a partnership with Bilt, so that’s now another option for being rewarded for online shopping. The rewards work a little differently, though:
- For the first six months, all Bilt members will receive a 1:1 conversion rate, meaning you can earn one Bilt point in lieu of every cent cash back
- After that introductory period, Bilt Silver, Gold, and Platinum members, will maintain that rate, while non-elite Bilt members will earn one Bilt point in lieu of every two cents cash back (which I wouldn’t recommend long term)
There are pros and cons to both Amex and Bilt. With Amex, the benefit is that everyone gets a 1:1 transfer ratio long term, assuming you have a card earning Membership Rewards points. With Bilt, the benefit is that you don’t actually need to have a credit card, and all your rewards for a payment period can retroactively be converted into Bilt points, including the rewards earned from the refer-a-friend bonus.
So in the short term I think there’s more value with Bilt, while in the long term, I think there’s broader appeal with Amex.
How often do you get “paid” with Rakuten?
If you make a purchase through Rakuten, you should see it show in your Rakuten account within hours. However, you only get “paid” (whether in cash or points) once every three months. Assuming you have a balance of at least $5 (or 500 points) you’ll get paid as follows:
- For activity between January 1 and March 31, get paid on May 15
- For activity between April 1 and June 30, get paid on August 15
- For activity between July 1 and September 30, get paid on November 15
- For activity between October 1 and December 31, get paid on February 15
Rakuten’s refer-a-friend program
If you’re new to Rakuten, make sure you sign-up through a refer-a-friend link, so that you can earn a reward for your first activity. Rakuten is currently offering a best-ever $50 bonus for new members, where you receive that reward if you make a purchase of at least $50 within the first 90 days. That’s a way to basically get $50 worth of stuff for free, as you can even purchase gift cards.
Bottom line
Rakuten is my favorite online shopping portal thanks in large part of the ability to earn Amex Membership Rewards points in lieu of cash back for online purchases. Given the conversion rate, by my valuation this increases the value of rewards by around 70%.
If you’re into earning travel rewards, make sure you’re using Rakuten to get as much value as possible. If you’re not yet a Rakuten member, make sure you sign-up through a refer-a-friend link, so you can earn the biggest bonus possible.
Anyone else love Rakuten for the ability to earn Amex points?
