Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend. Yesterday, I went to the Points.com website and noticed a banner message at the top of the page that read, “Please note that the Points Loyalty Wallet is being retired on September 6, 2022.” I also noticed a new logo that said Points, a Plusgrade company. Have I been living under a rock not knowing that Points was acquired and closing their loyalty wallet in a few weeks? I did some digging and this is what I found out.
On June 30, 2022, Plusgrade acquired Points for $385 million and put out this press release. I also didn’t know Points was a public traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange (PTS) or Nasdaq stock exchange (PCOM). Who is this Plusgrade company?
I also learned the Plusgrade was acquired by Novacap on September 17, 2021, for an undisclosed amount. According to Crunchbase, “Novacap is a Canadian private equity firm with over $2.8 billion of assets under management.” That doesn’t really tell me much about Novacap or Plusgrade, but I did want to focus on the Points Loyalty Wallet that is closing in a few weeks.
Over the years, many big name airline and hotel programs have dropped out of the Points Loyalty Wallet (which basically tracks your points and miles like AwardWallet). My favorite part of the Points Loyalty Wallet was the ability to transfer / convert / exchange points from one program into points from a different program. Most of the time it was a terrible deal, but every now and then, it made sense. As of today, you can transfer out of these 7 programs on the left and into these 8 programs on the right.
If you have small points balances with any of the programs on the left, you may want to exchange them into points with a different program. After September 6 (maybe even sooner), this feature will disappear.
Points processes most of the major airline and hotel program buy miles/points programs, so I am curious if there will be any big changes after September 6. I assume Points makes a commission on each purchase, so the more transactions they generate for the airline and hotel programs, the better. Only time will tell. Did you ever use the Points Loyalty Wallet? Let me know in the comments. If you have any questions about Points or the Points Loyalty Wallet, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
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I just saw the banner today and ended up here after googling about it. It’s true the exchanges were often a ripoff, but sometimes points in one program would be available so cheap due to promos (whether through transactions or direct purchase) that it made sense to buy/earn a ton and exchange them. I often earned tons of Starwood points in their promos when they were especially generous in the mid 2010s and exchanged them for Amtrak points, or vice versa when I was racked up Amtrak points from paid trips trying to hit Select status but still needed a place to stay. Today I was just trying to see if I could scrounge together enough points for a hotel stay, but there’s not enough participating programs anymore.
Hi Liz, thank you for commenting on the post. Yeah, there are used to be a lot more partners available to exchange points with, but now it’s just the bottom of the barrel. It was a great feature when it worked well. I remember exchanging JetBlue points and Amtrak points back-and-forth a few times depending on my situation.
I even had a time when I was so broke that I just needed to find a way to get something to eat and I was exchanging spg and Amtrak points into Speedy Rewards and getting gas station pizza and stuff Desparate times, man. Hopefully the points exchanges initiated within the various programs remain available.
Dang, I’m glad you were able to get some food and gas when you really needed it. Most airline and hotel programs have transfer rates to other hotel and airline programs, but the conversions are usually much less than 1:1. If you can get 50% or better, that would be a win.
Considering the amount of points I accumulate just from daily activities (e.g. IHG’s 250 points per GrubHub order, Amtrak points on many retail purchases, etc.), I’m usually not too concerned about maximizing the points value in the exchanges. I’m mostly just bummed that I’ll probably end up flying more soon since Amtrak appears to have ended its through pricing of multicity trips. It was always a great way to stop in New York for pastrami at Katz’s on my way between DC and Boston without added fare, or a way to beat the system and take a layover at NYP to get a lower fare for a trip that would have been in a higher fare bucket booked direct, but now they just price the segments and add them up
Ya, I miss the old Amtrak Guest Rewards program that was broken into zones. Seems like trips cost more points than they used to.