American Express Membership Rewards - MR- does it cost our companies anything?

I just got a letter from AMEX informing me that my employer has declined to allow employees to participate in the MR program. The employees pay for the annual membership fee so does it really cost the company any money by letting us participate?

It is quite possible that your company has worked out a deal with AMEX to consolidate all the points at the corporate level.

The company I used to work for could have 5 sub cards points roll up to the main cardholders MR account.

TW

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">I just got a letter from AMEX informing me that my employer has declined to allow employees to participate in the MR program. The employees pay for the annual membership fee so does it really cost the company any money by letting us participate? </font>

Yes, it is very possible that American Express will charge your company extra fees depending on the number of its cardholders who participate in Membership Rewards, since this is an expensive program for them. YOu will notice for example, that no mileage-based visa/master card has corporate card programs for large companies due to the cost associated with giving out the miles.

Your company may also not want to give out miles for other reasons, including conflicts with government contracts or internal ethics dealing with employees benefiting from corporate purchases (which in most cases in a large company would actually get you fired).

FF

According to my corporate travel department, it was 2 million dollars less to decline to allow employees to get points on our corporate Diners. Even though we would pay the $60 yearly fee. Yep. 2 million per year.

Assuming that the annual fees are still being paid, I have to wonder why the company would have increased costs for the MR program. There must be some sort of rebate on charges given to the company by Amex in lieu of MR participation, or some other accomodation. If not, why would Amex differentiate between this and any normal individual cardholder that pays the annual fees?

$2m Cheaper?

The company I work for lets us claim the MR points, but we have to pay the annual MR fee (Well I don't as it is included as another card on my Personal AmEx account).

Last year we spent approx $210m on our corporate cards, so working on the basis of merchant fees of 3%, an income of $6.3m for AmEx. However they do not charge us for our cards and we also receive money back from them, depending on how much we spend on our cards.

Thanks,
Richard