What changed
American Express India's rewards pages now carry this notice: "Effective 30 September' 2026, the Reward Multiplier program, through which you earn accelerated Membership Rewards® points on purchases with select brands and through the e-voucher platform, ShopWise, will be discontinued."
Amex's own Reward Multiplier terms put the last eligible day at 29 September 2026 — the offer ran "from January 1, 2021 – September 29, 2026". Accelerated points on purchases made with brands go entirely, with no replacement. The only accelerator that survives is ShopWise, Amex's e-voucher platform, covering "200+ brands across shopping, dining, and travel". The brands named on the live pages today — Apple, Tanishq, Nykaa, MakeMyTrip, Myntra, Ajio, Flipkart, Forest Essentials, Lenovo — stop paying a bonus on direct purchases.
Amex publishes no announcement date, only the effective one, so we date this item to the day we verified the notice.
Who is affected
Every Amex card we track, but not equally — and the multiplier is not the "up to 5X" the marketing tiles claim. From Amex's own T&C table:
| Card | Reward Multiplier tier | Bonus lost |
|---|---|---|
| Platinum Card | 5X | 4 points per ₹40 |
| Gold Card | 5X | 4 points per ₹50 |
| Platinum Travel | 3X | 2 points per ₹50 |
| Membership Rewards Credit Card | 2X | 1 point per ₹50 |
| SmartEarn | 2X | 1 point per ₹50 |
Two things this does not touch. SmartEarn's own 10X partner-merchant and 5X Amazon accelerators are a separate product feature and survive. Co-brands were never eligible: the T&C covers "all other Cards issued by American Express excluding all Cobrand Cards".
What to do
The programme was capped at 25,000 bonus points a month, and that caps the loss too: 300,000 points a year, worth about ₹75,000 at our typical ₹0.25 a point for Membership Rewards, or roughly ₹1.5 lakh at the ₹0.50 you reach through the best transfer partners (how we value points). That is the ceiling for a holder who maxed the cap every month, not a typical outcome.
The per-purchase number is the one to plan around. On the Gold Card at 5X, ₹50,000 of Tanishq or Apple spend earned 4,000 bonus points — about ₹1,000, or 2% back — and after 29 September it earns nothing extra. Move that spend to a ShopWise e-voucher for the same brand and the accelerator survives — that is the only route Amex has left open. If your Amex case rested on brand bonuses rather than the base rate, re-run it before your renewal date: our Platinum review already shows that card's rewards cannot clear its ₹66,000 fee on arithmetic alone.
Sources
- American Express India — Reward Multiplier programme page — notice verified 30 August 2026
- American Express India — Membership Rewards programme page — identical notice, verified 30 August 2026
- American Express India — Reward Multiplier terms and conditions — per-card bonus table and the 29 September 2026 end date, verified 30 August 2026