I have just discovered that Rakuten (affiliate link) pays out rewards in American Express Membership Rewards points. These points are paid out whether you shop using an American Express card or any other card. Of course, you must already have an American Express card earning Membership Rewards for this to be useful.
This comes as a welcome surprise as our credit card strategy is currently shifting to grow our Apple Card credit limit, which means that we have to use it as our primary card for daily purchases.
Long-term, this is great news as these Membership Rewards points are in addition to whatever Membership Rewards points the American Express card earns. This means that we could significantly boost our rewards by using an AMEX card with Rakuten affiliate links.
AmEx Membership Rewards points are useful for transferring to hotels and airlines for free stays and flights. As MR points are a rather general reward, they are more flexible than simply earning points at a particular hotel chain or miles at a particular airline.
Rakuten works by directing your shopping to their long list of vendors. When you shop, you are using an affiliate link that pays Rakuten for the referral. Rakuten then shares some of those rewards with you. To make this easier, there are browser plug-ins that will let you know when you are shopping at one of the participating sites. You can then activate the affiliate link so that you can earn your reward.
Rakuten does not necessarily have to pay you in American Express Membership Rewards points. Instead, you can opt to be paid in cash. You would receive quarterly checks or PayPal payments with your rewards. We are opting for the Membership Rewards points because they are valued at roughly $0.015 each when used with airlines. Therefore, they are potentially more valuable than cash.
In the short-term, this means that we don't have to give up earning MR points while we are using the Apple Card to grow our credit limit. Most cards are reluctant to raise your credit limit if you do not show much use of your existing credit. Therefore, in the coming months, we are shifting our spending to the Apple Card to demonstrate that we need a higher credit limit.
But, even if we weren't doing this, it means that we could use any card to earn MR points in addition to whatever points or miles the card already earns. Obviously, this does not work for all vendors. But, there are at least a handful of places we frequent that participate as Rakuten affiliates.