One of American Express Cards most valuable perk, Refer a Friend has been quietly devalued. Best I know there has been no formal communication from Amex, I unwittingly noticed the change when logged into my account couple of days ago.

Although I haven’t been able to confirm the changes with Amex directly (reps are clueless as usual), many cardmembers have now confirmed that they are seeing the reduced referral bonus on their accounts, which makes me think this isn’t a glitch.

While not every card has been devalued, and the annual cap of 200,000 points per card remains intact, Amex have cut the number of points awarded upon each successful referral on most cards.

What is Refer a Friend Program

If you are not familiar, Refer a friend is a program under which you can refer family and friends to sign up for a card using your personal referral link. They can apply for the same card as the one you have, or another eligible American Express Card.

If they get approved for the card, Amex will deposit bonus points in your account within 90 days. The number of bonus points you receive depends on the type of card used to generate the referral link, but have historically ranged between 30,000 – 45,000 points per successful referral. That is changing, as I explain further down in the post.

Outside of earning chunky Welcome Bonuses by opening new cards, the referral bonus remains the easiest and cheapest way to accumulate large quantities of Membership Rewards Points or Velocity/Qantas points.

Which cards are impacted

It appears that aside from American Express Platinum Card which retains its 45,000 bonus points earn rate (per successful referral), every other card has had referral bonus slashed as you can see in the table below.

As disappointing as the reduction in referral bonus is, that’s not all. It appears that referral links from different cards now generate different Welcome Bonus Offers for the referred, which was not the case earlier.

For instance, take a look below at the Welcome Bonus on The American Express Explorer Card (70,000 points) via a referral link generated through my Explorer Card.

And here is the Welcome Bonus (80,000 points) on the same card from a referral link generated through my Platinum Card.

I suppose its not entirely unreasonable that the more expensive card should carry a superior offer than a cheaper card, but this does create a little bit of confusion for those with multiple cards.

Practical implications of these changes

If you regularly max out the 200,000 points annual cap on the card, then these changes perhaps won’t impact you too much. For everyone else, it will require a lot more effort and no extra reward.

For instance, someone with the Amex Explorer Card in the past only needed to make 5 successful referrals per year to earn 200,000 points since each referral was worth 40,000 points. With the bonus trimmed to just 25,000 points, they will need to refer 8 people to earn the same number of points.

Amex Platinum Card

Now, it goes without saying that making 8 referrals per year is much harder than 5, and this could mean that many cardmembers will never make the cap, which is sad.

In Conclusion

Amex have made it harder for most cardmembers to max out the annual referral bonus. The 200,000 points annual cap isn’t changing, rather, each successful referral is now worth up to 15,000 points less than earlier which is disappointing.

It would also appear that personal referral links now produce variable welcome bonus offers for the referred, depending on the card used to generate the link.

Despite all of the above, American Express cards remain the best value cards for points and miles enthusiasts in Australia. They are amongst the highest points earning card and offer amazing flexibility in terms of number of quality transfer partners.

When you consider that most of their cards come with some kind of travel credit which in many instances fully offset the annual fee, not to mention real money saving perks such as Amex Offers, its not hard to see why they are so highly sought after by serious points and miles collectors.

What do you make of the changes to Refer a Friend Program? Leave a comment below.