American Express Partners with Paypal: Pay Amex Balance with Paypal Balance, Use Points for Paypal Purchases and More (0.7¢ Per Point)

Update 10/16/19: A year after the initial announcement MR points can now be used at merchants accepting PayPal for 0.7¢ per point. More or less a useless redemption, fingers crossed we see some promotions to encourage this use like we do with Amazon.

Original post: American Express has partnered with Paypal to streamline the digital experience for Amex and Paypal customers. Upcoming initiatives, including my commentary:

Press Release

  • Use Membership Rewards points for purchases at millions of PayPal merchants online.
    • The points redemption will likely be a useless redemption rate of like .6 cents per point, as it is with other Amex pay-with-points partnerships. Hopefully there’ll be some shop-with-points promos, like Amazon has, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
  • Send money via Venmo or PayPal to friends and family directly from the Amex mobile app.
    • Sending money directly in the app might be somewhat convenient, though a lot of people like using their bank or debit card to send money, thus saving themselves the fee. Not sure if that’ll be possible in the Amex app.
  • Easily add American Express Cards to the PayPal wallet directly from the Amex mobile app or website.
    • Sounds convenient. Wish Paypal didn’t have a limit of 9 cards per Paypal account which can be saved.
  • Pay their American Express bill with their PayPal or Venmo balance via the PayPal Instant Transfer feature.
    • Wow! I didn’t see this coming. Not very useful for me, personally, but I’m sure many eBay sellers and the like will find this useful. The catch (pointed out by a reader) is that this runs through Paypal Instant Transfer which has a fee of 1% (max $10). Some might find it useful for high payments and will swallow the $10 fee.
  • More clearly identify their specific American Express Cards in the PayPal wallet with Card-specific branding.
    • Nice! We all have this issue with Paypal and other merchants whereby two Amex cards both show up in your Paypal account as xxxx1000. This should remedy that problem.

PayPal and American Express will work together to implement all of these features over the course of 2019.
    Chuck
  • On October 16, 2019, 17:20

View Comments (41)

  • Hmmm, if I buy PayPal gift cards at the grocery store using my Amex I get 4x Amex pts + 2x fuel points. If I then use the PayPal money to pay off the Amex bill, would that be the ultimate churn? Yes, there's a 1% fee, but the double stacked points would be worth it. Even if you dumped the Amex pts back to PayPal (and there's much better redemption options) you'd still be up 1.8% + the fuel pts...

  • Fyi, everyone is auto enrolled, but you can unlink from each specific card in the wallet. I won't be using points but never want to accidentally use them either.

    • I was autoenrolled as well. Why wouldn't these companies give opt-in option? Seems fishy and unethical.

  • "More clearly identify their specific American Express Cards in the PayPal wallet with Card-specific branding." Super helpful. This should be standard across all merchant sites...

  • Hope I read this earlier. I can confirm that spending through PayPal does not trigger Amex offer.

  • for now, im going to ignore this news. lets see how good the execution is. NOBODY should be happy about PayPal partnering with anyone and having this level of interoperable data sharing. most wont give a crap about the cyber security angle but i do. i like to keep shit separate when possible.

    its highly likely u will need to login PayPal with ur amex login or allow total control by PayPal. That shit aint happening. This cant be just a simple DOSH type linking of CC. gonna watch from the sidelines first.

    • +1 (x a million)

      RAT + paypal arrogance (as in, we're sorry we just cancelled your order, but for reasons we can't tell you, you're presumed to be guilty of something until we say otherwise.... and in the post 9/11 world, if we say "security," you're not permitted to get angry about it, or we'll stick a nasty note on your account....)

      => catastrophes waiting to happen to many.

    • Perhaps this should say: AMEX RAT team partners with PayPal to acquire more data for spend/abuse analysis.

    • Yeah that definitely makes it a hard pass. Just like Drop or whatever the other app is when you give all your login details

  • Didn't payPal just increase Instant Transfer fee to 1%? Would they waive that fee for paying Amex?

    • Ahha, I missed that! Looks like it'll run through the Instant Transfer which comes with a fee. Let me add a note, thanks.

      • I don't believe this is accurate. Paypal considers all immediate transfers "instant transfers" which includes payments to others, as well as Acorns. This is separate than the "instant transfer to bank feature" which will be charging the 1% fee.

    • Sure you can IF you don't mind paying cash since that's the only mode of payment for paypal cash at CVS plus a fee.

        • I meant adding balance to PP acct via MyCash using a generated barcode you show to cashier for funds to be added to your acct. Is it YMMV per store as to mode of payment?

    • You don’t need to pay Amex directly for this to work so what is the real benefit? I thought the problem was buying the PayPal cards with credit, not liquidating?

    • Yes, once this feature is enabled that should work. But of course I have no idea if it will please the Paypal gods.

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