Amex MRCC is an unmissable card if you are in anyway interested in maximising card benefits. This card introduces you to their courteous customer service.
The only issue is of acceptability. Most small vendors will not be accepting this card for payments. You will need to have a backup card for these frequent occasions.
Welcome Offer and fees
Joining/First Year fee is Rs 1000+ tax= Rs 1180
Renewal Fee is Rs 4500+ tax= Rs 5310
Welcome gift of 4000 bonus membership rewards (MR) points on spending Rs 5000. The points are worth Rs 1480.
You may use my referral (Apply Now) to get the first year free. You will still be eligible for the welcome gift, while I will get a bonus of 8000 MR.
Fee waiver
100% Annual fee waived off if total spends are Rs.1,50,000 and above.
50% Annual fee will be waived off if total are between Rs.90,000 to Rs.1,49,999.
Amex MRCC Savings Calculator
You can input your expected spends with this card to find out how much you will save with this card. It has been assumed that you will go with the statement credit from the 24 Karat Gold collection making value of 1MR = Rs. 0.375
If the Calculator doesn't run, click here and run again :)
Reward Rate
You get Bonus1000 MR Points for 4 transactions of Rs. 1,500 and above each done during a calendar month.
1 Membership Rewards Point for every Rs. 50 spent. This means the savings are 0.74%.
You also get an additional Bonus 1000 MR for total spends of Rs 20000 and more in a calendar year. This is a one time enrolment based benefit. The Bonus points will not be given if you haven't enrolled. Click here to enroll.
You do not get points for fuel, Fuel, Insurance, Utilities, Cash Transactions.
To note, you do get points for wallet transactions.
Reward Redemption
There are multiple ways to redeem your points like
Pay with points (Rs 0.25/1MR)
Buy vouchers
Book air tickets
Transfer to other programs
But these all give rather poor MR value.
24/18 Karat Gold Collection
The best way to maximise the MR value is the 24/18 Karat Gold Collection.
24,000 MR points / 24 Karat Gold Collection:
Taj voucher worth Rs. 14,000 (1MR=Rs 0.583)
Tanishq voucher worth Rs. 10,000 (1MR=Rs 0.417)
Statement Credit worth Rs. 9,000 (1MR=Rs 0.375)
18,000 MR points / 18 Karat Gold Collection:
Taj Voucher worth Rs. 9,000 (1MR=Rs 0.5)
Amazon e-voucher worth Rs. 7,000 (1MR=Rs 0.389)
Statement Credit worth Rs. 6,000 (1MR=Rs 0.33)
I always go for the Amazon e-voucher as it can be used for almost anything.
How to Maximise your Benefits?
You just need to simply complete the following in each calendar month.
4 transactions each of Rs 1500 or more
Total spends of Rs 20000
As you can see, this nets you 4.7% savings (Amazon e-vouchers) on yearly spends of Rs 2.4 lacs. Also Amex runs additional offers which can be further availed.
Lounge Access
Even though this card comes with a hefty membership fee, no complimentary lounge access is provided with this card.
Complimentary Amex Smart Earn Credit Card
As long as you hold Amex MRCC, you can get Amex Smart Earn credit card as Lifetime Free. Smart Earn credit card has many merchants/partners on which you get 10X,5X MR points. Also your MR points will be shown as combined for both the credit cards. You should definitely go for this. It will help you reach your 24 Karat Gold collection's goals that much quicker.
Amex Offers
You need to login to your Amex account and scroll down to see the list of available offers. You should check this from time to time. Sometimes, you will unmissable offers here. The Amex offers are too good and alone justify taking this card.
Reward Multiplier
Use this portal to get directed to ecommerce websites and also to purchase e-voucher. You will get double the points. The corresponding savings are just 1.5%.
The link is https://www.americanexpress.com/in/benefits/rewards-program.html
Similar or better cards
Amex has acceptability issues and many places will not accept payment via this card. However, it is quite well accepted for online payments. So what you need is a card for offline spends. You could go with SBI Simply Save or SBI Prime credit card which give 2.5% savings on your offline spends and 5% savings for your utility and insurance spends.