What's the Amex Platinum Actually Worth After the December 2025 Membership Rewards Devaluation?

On 15 December 2025, American Express devalued its Australian Membership Rewards (MR) program. The points community called it "brutal," and a lot of Amex Platinum holders read the headlines and assumed their card just got worse.

Here's the part the headlines mostly got wrong: if you transfer your MR points to Qantas or Velocity — which is what most Australian Platinum holders actually do — nothing changed. The devaluation hit a different set of partners entirely.

This post lays out exactly what changed, what an MR point is worth now using our published per-point values, and the factual break-even on the Platinum Card's $1,450 fee. No "you should keep it" or "you should cancel it" — just the numbers, with every source linked, so you can run them against your own spend.

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What actually changed on 15 December 2025

The devaluation raised the transfer ratio (more MR points for the same partner mile) on a band of secondary airline partners, and removed one. Qantas, Velocity and KrisFlyer were left alone.

MR transfer partner	Old ratio	New ratio (from 15 Dec 2025)	Change
Qantas Frequent Flyer	2:1	2:1	No change
Velocity Frequent Flyer	2:1	2:1	No change
Singapore KrisFlyer	3:1	3:1	No change (was devalued back in Oct 2023)
Cathay (Asia Miles)	2:1	3:1	Devalued ~33% more points
British Airways Club (Avios)	2:1	3:1	Devalued
Qatar Airways Privilege Club	2:1	3:1	Devalued
Etihad Guest	2:1	3:1	Devalued
Malaysia Airlines Enrich	2:1	3:1	Devalued
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club	2:1	3:1	Devalued
Emirates Skywards	3:1	4:1	Devalued
Thai Royal Orchid Plus	2:1	removed	Gone entirely

A 2:1 ratio means two MR points become one partner mile. Moving to 3:1 means the same partner mile now costs three MR points instead of two — so those partners got 50% more expensive to reach. The last day to convert at the old rates was 14 December 2025.

Sources: Australian Frequent Flyer — Amex MR devaluation, 15 Dec 2025; Point Hacks — Amex Membership Rewards changes 2025; Amex AU — Ascent Premium reward changes (PDF).

So who actually got hit

The deval bites if your MR strategy leaned on the partners that moved to 3:1 — typically the Avios sweet spots (short-haul Qantas/Cathay redemptions priced in Avios), Cathay Asia Miles, or Qatar Privilege Club for QSuites. If that's your game, those redemptions just got 50% dearer in MR terms.

If your plan was the mainstream one — transfer to Qantas or Velocity and book a flight — your maths is identical to what it was on 14 December.

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What an MR point is worth now

We don't publish a standalone valuation for Membership Rewards points, because MR has no credible published cents-per-point figure on its own — its value comes entirely from what you transfer it into. So we value an MR point by the best frequent-flyer program we do value, at our published per-point values (the December 2025 AFF basis this site already uses for card rankings):

• Qantas point: 1.6¢
• Velocity point: 1.7¢
• KrisFlyer mile: 1.5¢

Apply the post-deval transfer ratios:

Transfer to	Ratio	Maths	Value per MR point
Velocity	2:1	0.5 × 1.7¢	0.85¢
Qantas	2:1	0.5 × 1.6¢	0.80¢
KrisFlyer	3:1	0.333 × 1.5¢	0.50¢

The best of these — Velocity at 0.85¢ per MR point — did not change on 15 December 2025. Neither did Qantas or KrisFlyer. The numbers above are what an MR point is worth today via the programs most people use.

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What the Platinum Card earns

The Amex Platinum Card (the charge card) earns 2.25 MR points per $1 on eligible purchases (1 point per $1 on government payments). Put that against the per-point values above:

You transfer to	Earn	Value per $1 spent	Effective return
Velocity	2.25 × 0.85¢	1.91¢	~1.91%
Qantas	2.25 × 0.80¢	1.80¢	~1.80%

So every $1,000 of eligible spend produces roughly $19 of Velocity value or $18 of Qantas value. The sign-up bonus is separate: the current public offer is 200,000 MR points for $5,000 of spend in the first 3 months (Point Hacks / AFF) — worth about $1,700 at the Velocity value above. Our offer tracker has also recorded targeted offers up to 225,000 points. Bonuses are a one-off in year one, so the break-even below is built on ongoing value, not the bonus.

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The factual break-even on the $1,450 fee

The Platinum Card's annual fee is $1,450 (Amex AU). Amex attaches its own stated-dollar credits to the card — these are hard numbers Amex publishes, not our estimates:

• $450 annual Travel Credit (Amex AU benefits)
• Up to $400 annual Global Dining Credit (through 31 December 2026, same source)

If you use both in full, they offset $850 of the fee, leaving a net cash cost of $600. Everything else — Centurion and Priority Pass lounge access, Plaza Premium, Virgin Australia domestic lounges, Hilton Honors Gold, Marriott Bonvoy Gold Elite, a complimentary Accor Plus Explorer membership (Amex states a $349 value) — is real but worth a different amount to each person, so we leave it as a value-to-you input rather than assigning a house number.

Here's the break-even on points value alone, at the Velocity rate of 1.91¢ per $1 (the higher of the two; Qantas is a touch more spend):

Scenario	Fee to recover with points	Eligible spend to break even (Velocity, 1.91¢/$1)
Use the $450 + $400 credits in full	$600	~$31,400 / year
Use the credits, value lounges at $0	$600	same — ~$31,400
Ignore the credits entirely	$1,450	~$75,900 / year

The maths is reproducible: $600 ÷ 0.0191 ≈ $31,400; $1,450 ÷ 0.0191 ≈ $75,900. At the Qantas rate (1.80¢/$1) the first figure rises to about $33,300.

Read it as scenarios, not a verdict. If you'll genuinely use the $850 of credits and you value the lounge access above zero, the spend needed to come out ahead on points is in the low-$30,000s a year. If you won't touch the credits and don't value the lounges, you're recovering the full $1,450 on points alone and the number jumps past $75,000. Where you land on that scale is yours to decide.

Run it against your own balance and spend:

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The one-line version

The December 2025 Amex MR devaluation was real, but it hit the secondary partners (Avios, Asia Miles, Qatar, Etihad, Malaysia, Virgin Atlantic — all to 3:1 — plus Emirates to 4:1 and Thai removed), not Qantas, Velocity or KrisFlyer. If you transfer to Qantas or Velocity, your Platinum points are worth exactly what they were on 14 December: about 0.85¢ each, or a ~1.91% return on spend. The keep-or-cancel call comes down to whether you'll use the $850 of stated credits and value the lounges — run your own annual spend against the break-even table above.

Figures use this site's published per-point values (AFF December 2025 basis) and Amex's own stated fees and credits, each linked above. Transfer ratios and card benefits change; verify against the linked Amex pages before acting on the numbers.