American Express’ New Plenti Loyalty Program Announced & Details Of The Program (New Credit Card)

American Express are set to launch a new customer loyalty program titled “Plenti”. Users of the new loyalty program will be able to earn points that can be used for future purchases at participating merchants. The program will be run by US Loyalty which is a unit of American Express.

Plenti will not be exclusive to American Express cardholders. Users of Plenti will be able to use cash, debit and even credit cards from other card issuers to earn points. American Express will also be launching a new Plenti-branded credit card which will allow users to earn additional points.

The basic idea behind Plenti is rather than each individual store running their own loyalty program, they use Plenti instead.

Plenti Partners

At the moment we know the following merchants will be participating in Plenti:

• Macy’s
• Exxon Mobile
• AT&T
• Nationwide
• Rite Aid
• Direct Energy
• Hulu

Credit Card

We don’t know much about the Plenti branded credit card at the moment. Although Chief Executive of US Loyalty, Abeer Bhatia was quoted as saying:

For every dollar you spend you’re going to get a point on the credit card, plus whatever you get from that merchant,

This makes it seem like the Plenti card will only earn 1x points on purchases made through the Plenti program, unless the points are worth more than 2¢ each (more on this in a second) I can’t see this being an attractive option unless there is a high sign up bonus or some other benefits.

Points

Earning Points

The amount of Plenti points you’ll earn will vary from merchant to merchant. For example, you might earn 10x points on all Macy’s purchases but only 1x points on Exxon Mobile purchases. This should be familiar to anybody that has every used an online shopping portal before.

They do give some specific examples as well:

• $80 at Macy’s = 100 Plenti points
• $1 at AT&T = 1 Plenti Point

There will also be promotional offers where users can earn more points than normal. The other thing to consider is that not all purchases at retailers will be eligible for Plenti points. For example, tobacco and lottery tickets at Exxon Mobile gas stations will not earn points and neither will prescription drugs at Rite Aid.

Redeeming Points

Points can be used at any participating merchant and are worth the same regardless of where you use them. The points will expire after two years (it’s not clear if this is first in first out, or if any activity will keep all of the points active). Every 1,000 points equals at least $10 in savings.

Final Thoughts

How useful Plenti is will really depend on what the earning rate is at each merchant. For example, 100 points for $80 in purchases at Macy’s is a terrible earning rate. If we look at cash back monitor, we’ll notice that the highest cash back rate is 10%. If we used the shopping portal we’d earn $8 in cash back but only $1 in discounts using Plenti.

Plenti could be useful for other things though, such as double dipping (e.g purchase the gift card online and then use the gift card in store and earn Plenti discounts). Although I’m unsure if gift card purchases would earn Plenti points and it’s already possible to double dip like this using shopping portals.

Thanks to Gary Leff for first making me aware of this impending announcement & Jakarta Post for the details. We’ll update this post as the official announcement goes live.