American Express has just handed its cardholders a genuinely useful new trick. As of today, you can pay for Apple Pay transactions using your Membership Rewards points, directly inside the Apple Pay flow, without bouncing out to a separate app or wading through a redemption portal first. It is the kind of small convenience that sounds minor on paper but quietly removes a lot of friction in practice.
The way it works is refreshingly simple. When you check out online or in apps on an iPhone or iPad, you pick Apple Pay as usual, choose an eligible American Express Membership Rewards card, and then tap “Use Rewards.” From there you type in how much you want to cover with points, complete the transaction, and you are done. You can put points towards the whole purchase or just a slice of it, so it works whether you are clearing out a big balance or topping up a payment.
The headline appeal here is that everything happens at the point of sale. Normally redeeming card points means logging into a rewards dashboard, converting points at whatever rate the issuer fancies that week, and generally being made to work for it. Folding the whole thing into the existing Apple Pay checkout means the option is sitting right there when you actually want it, which is the moment you are paying for something.
There is a privacy line worth pulling out too. American Express says that when you redeem points through Apple Pay, Apple does not hold on to any transaction information tied to you. That fits Apple’s usual positioning on Apple Pay, where it tries to keep itself out of the data loop between you and your bank, and it is a sensible thing to make explicit given people are understandably wary about who sees their spending.
The timing is interesting given where Apple Pay is heading. The platform keeps growing in popularity, and iOS 27 is bringing interface changes designed to make switching between payment methods easier. Put those two things together and it would not be surprising to see other card issuers follow Amex’s lead with their own in-checkout redemption options over the coming months. For now, if you are an Amex cardholder sitting on a pile of Membership Rewards points, this is one of the more painless ways yet to actually put them to use.
