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"American Express claims it is breaking new ground with a program that lets cardmembers use their points to pay for cab rides in New York City.\nThe program, which included retrofitting VeriFone-designed Taxi TVs in 7,000 cabs, converts to 1 cent per point, meaning you need 1,000 points for a $10 cab fare. You earn a point for every dollar spent. Leslie Berland, SVP, digital partnerships and development at American Express, says the company is offering something unprecedented: A way to redeem points at point of sale. \"We're going where our customers are.\"\nThe idea is to get consumers to use their points for everyday transactions instead of hoarding them. \nSee also: Japanese Taxi Alerts Passengers in Danger of Losing a Phone or Wallet\nBrian Kelly, a.k.a. \"The Points Guy,\" wasn't hugely impressed with the program. \"Is it earth-shattering? No,\" he says, noting that AmEx offered a deal last year to instantly redeem Membership Rewards points for mobile gift cards on their phones and then redeem their card in-store at point of purchase.\nKelly also says the 1-cent-per-point rate is not exceptional when there are other programs that offer as much as 2- to 4-cents per point. AmEx makes 3 cents from merchants on each purchase, Kelly says, though a figure of 2 cents has also been quoted. (An AmEx rep could not be reached at the time of publication to verify the company's rate for merchants.) In addition, annual fees for AmEx cards range from $95 to $175.\n\nValue aside, the announcement appears to be breaking new ground for redeeming points at point-of-sale, at least in the U.S. \nAmEx launched a similar program offering point-of-sales points redemption in Germany in 2012 with 420 retail partners, including airport duty-free shops Gebr.Heinemann, household goods seller WMF, furniture retailer Lambert and Montblanc flagship stores.\nImage: Getty/NICHOLAS KAMM"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/10/21/american-express-lets-new-yorkers-pay-for-cab-rides-with-points/>