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With so many different rewards programs to choose from, it can be difficult to decide which one suits you best.
That said, if you like the idea of collecting a flexible and transferable rewards currency, you’ll certainly want to consider either the RBC Avion Rewards program or the American Express Membership Reward program (or both).
Both of these options are financial institution-run programs that earn versatile rewards currencies with diverse redemption choices and good value potential.
In this article, we’ll compare these two programs and currencies to see if one is better than the other and how they stack up in different key areas.
To see which of these transferable rewards currencies reigns supreme, we’ll compare the following categories:
Both RBC Avion Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards have a few ways to earn points — namely, with credit cards, through their shopping portal, by booking travel, with partnered programs/merchants, and through referrals.
The RBC Avion Rewards program offers the following credit cards:
These cards represent two different Avion membership levels (i.e., Premium and Elite), and their earning rates range from 1 point per $1 spent up to 3 points per $1 spent with the RBC ION+ Visa Card.
Comparatively, the American Express Membership Rewards program can be accessed with the following credit cards:
In terms of earning rates, the best one is available with the American Express Cobalt Card which gives you 5 MR points per $1 spent in the food and drink category, in addition to other elevated earning rates.
As we can see, both the RBC Avion Rewards and the American Express Membership Rewards program offer a nice range of credit cards, from entry-level, no-annual-fee options like the RBC ION Visa Card and the American Express® Green Card, to premium cards like the American Express Platinum Card® and the RBC Avion Visa Infinite Privilege that give you lots of perks and benefits (more on this below).
In addition to using the programs’ credit cards to quickly build up your account balance, you can also earn points through the following methods:
With American Express Membership Rewards, you can earn MR points through:
On the other side of this comparison, RBC Avion Rewards points can also be earned the following ways:
The next key area that we’ll compare is the redemption options that are available once you’ve accumulated a few points.
With both the RBC Avion program and the American Express Membership Rewards program, points can be redeemed the following ways:
For both of these programs, the most compelling and valuable redemption option is for travel.
Both RBC Avion and American Express Membership Rewards let you redeem your points to cover travel purchases made through their individual travel portals, and they both also offer a more fixed-value flight redemption option.
To best compare in this category, let’s take a look at the value you can get from each program through each redemption method.
With RBC Avion Rewards, you can redeem your points for flights, hotels, car rentals, and packages booked through the RBC Travel portal at a rate of1 Avion point = 1 cent.
If you hold an Avion-branded credit card (and are therefore an Avion Elite member), you can also redeem your hard-earned points through the RBC Travel Redemption Schedule.
This option lets you cover up to a maximum base fare for round-trip and one-way flights around the world using your Avion points.
Using this redemption method offers the best potential value, with the ability to redeem Avion points for up to 2.33 cents each in the “quick getaway” category.
American Express Membership Rewards also lets you redeem your MR points for travel booked through the Amex Travel portal, and they offer the same rate as RBC at 1 MR point = 1 cent.
Through the Amex Travel portal, you have access to book flights, hotels, car rentals, and packages in the same way as the RBC Travel portal.
Additionally, for flights, you can redeem your MR points using American Express’ Fixed Points travel chart, which offers value up to 2 cents per point. However, unlike RBC’s fixed-price flight redemption option, Amex only allows you to use this feature for round-trip flights (no one-way redemptions).
Both RBC Avion Rewards and American Express Memership Rewards let you transfer your points to partnered loyalty programs.
With RBC Avion, you can transfer your points to up to 4 different airline loyalty programs, depending on which Avion membership level you have access to.
Comparatively, the American Express Membership Rewards program lets you transfer to 6 airline loyalty programs and 2 hotel loyalty programs.
Notably, both programs let you transfer to The British Airways Club, turning your Avion points or MR points into Avios. This a particularly useful transfer as once you’ve got some British Airways Avios, you can then also transfer them onwards to the other Avios programs with Qatar Airways, Iberia, Finnair, and Aer Lingus.
Additionally, RBC Avion points can also be transferred between Avion accounts, so as long as you have an Avion-branded card, you’ll be able to access all the redemption options from that level using the points you earn across all your cards.
If you’ve got some Avion points or MR points in your account, and you don’t want to spend them on travel or transfer them to a partnered program, you can choose to redeem them for gift cards, merchandise, statement credits, and more.
With American Express Membership Rewards, examples of gift card redemption value includes:
These offer values of 0.8 cents per MR point and 0.77 cents per MR point, respectively.
With RBC Avion Rewards, you can expect gift card redemptions such as:
In terms of value, these options are worth 0.6 cents per Avion point, 0.71 cents per point, and 1 cent per Avion point, respectively.
When redeeming your points for merchandise, it’s difficult to determine exact value since the price of a given item tends to change from store to store and from day to day.
That said, we can compare the number of reward points that each program requires for the same item on the same day.
For example, if you wanted to redeem either your RBC Avion points or your American Express Membership Rewards points for a set of AirPods 4, it would cost you:
In terms of using your points for bills, statement credits, and investments, RBC Avion and American Express Membership Rewards offer the redemption values listed below.
Each of the programs also offers a number of additional benefits; however, many of these are specific to individual credit cards, so you’ll have to check out our credit card pages to get the full picture of which card offers which perk.
To give you a general idea, American Express Membership Rewards credit cards include benefits such as:
Comparatively, RBC Avion credit cards have been known to come with the following perks:
After comparing all the key areas above, we think that the American Express Membership Rewards program comes out just ahead of the RBC Avion Rewards program thanks to its slightly higher credit card earn rates and its longer list of airline and hotel loyalty program transfer partners.
That said, RBC Avion is a very close second, offering strong earning rates and incrementally better value in terms of fixed-price flight redemptions.
All and all, both programs stand out in the Canadian loyalty landscape as not only being powerful and versatile, but also being easy to access and enjoy.
If you’re interested in saving money on your future travels, we highly recommend exploring these programs further and signing up for one or both of them.
Savings are here (if you don’t see the sign-up form, please click here):
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