Edit: This article was updated in April 2018 with details of the extended promotion.

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American Express and Amazon have a partnership known as ‘Shop with Points’.

This allows you to use your American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points for a credit towards Amazon purchases. Generally speaking, you should avoid doing this as it offers pretty poor value.

But there are some exceptions.

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An easy £15 discount

Back in December 2016, Amazon and Amex launched a generous promotion offering £15 off purchases of £25 or more when you ‘pay with points’. I first covered this offer in March 2017 and it was due to expire in March 2018.

However, the promotional page has changed and it has now been extended until 30th June 2018 or when 33,333 customers have redeemed the offer.

This promotion is open to anyone with a American Express card that earns Membership Rewards points – including Green, Gold and Platinum cardholders.

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How it works

Presumably, this offer is meant to persuade you to waste large amounts of MR points on Amazon. The bit they don’t want you to know is that the system will allow you to use just 2 MR points to part pay for your purchase.

Here’s how the deal looks in practice:

1. You must first enrol your Gold/Platinum/Green card and link your Membership Rewards account with your Amazon account via this page here.
2. This offer will only work with goods sold by Amazon directly and not via third parties (this excludes digital content).
3. Add £25+ of eligible items to your basket.
4. You must select your enrolled Amex card to pay.
5. After doing so you will see your available MR points balance and the second of three options that says: ‘Choose a different amount’. Select that option and type £0.01 as the amount. This will use just 2 MR points towards your purchase while still allowing you to access the deal.
6. Add promo code: AMEX16SWP
7. After clicking ‘Use this payment method’ you should see the £15 discount applied to your basket.

Note: This promotion is only available on Amazon accounts that were active before 28th October 2017 so, unfortunately, you cannot create a new account just to take advantage of this deal. It also does not work on gift cards. 

If you don’t have an Amex Gold or Platinum card, you can find out more about them here:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card – full review

American Express Platinum card – full review

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Verdict

This an excellent offer and a good opportunity for some free Amazon ‘credit’.

If you have access to a number of different American Express Green/Gold/Platinum cards and various Amazon accounts via family, friends or colleagues, you could do very nicely out of this indeed.

The page you need to get started is here

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Header image credit: Jeramey Lende / Shutterstock.com