The Amex Choice card is the little brother of the Amex Cobalt and the MR Select Point version of the SimplyCash Card. This would be a good card to start with as it has no annual fee, but with that, you get no insurance and a low earning rate.

Annual Fee & Signup Bouns

• No Annual Fee
• 12,500 MR Select Points when you spend $1250 in the first 3 months

Earning rates + Bonuses

• 1x on everything
• +1 points on hotels or car rentals booked with American Express Travel & on The Hotel Collection

Redemption Options

• Statement Credits at 1000 points = $10 on travel a value of 1 CPP
• Statement Credits at 1000 points = $7 on everything else a value of 0.7 CPP
• Amazon.ca Credits at 1000 points = $7 a value of 0.7 CPP
• Gift Cards at a value of roughly 0.8 CPP
• AmexTravle.com 1000 points = $10 a value of 1 CPP
• Marriott Bonvoy at 1 point = 1.2 points
• Amex Fixed Point Travel* with a value of between 1.5–1.75 CPP and 2 CPP on popular routes in Economy Class and a value of between 1.6–1.8 CPP in Business Class

*For more information about Amex Fixed Point travel read my previous post on the Amex Cobalt.

Insurance

• none

Thoughts

The Amex Choice is the RM Select version of the SimplyCash that earns 1.25% cashback so before getting this card I would see if you can get more than 1.25 CPP then the Choice card is better or if you don’t want to deal with trying to optimize your point redemption it might be better to get the SimplyCash.

Because the Choice Card has very low earning rates and doesn’t earn RM Points I would only get this card if I was planning to later upgrade to the Amex Cobalt, as they earn the same type of points, and I save the points to get a better redemption.

The two redemptions I would recommend with the Choice Card would be using a minimum of 15,000 points for a round trip ticket with the Amex Fixed Point Travel or transferring 60,000 points to Marriott Bonvoy at 1:1.2 ratio and then transferring from Bonvoy to some airline at 3:1 and getting a bonus 5000 miles from Marriott.