AIR MILES

AIR MILES adds wholesale club and alcohol retailer accelerated earn rates + expands AIR MILES Receipts

Patrick S News

A big announcement today from AIR MILES as they have added new BMO AIR MILES credit card accelerated earn rates for wholesale clubs and alcohol retailers plus they will be adding alcohol retailers to AIR MILES receipts. The program has also added Instacart to AIR MILES Shops as one more avenue for collectors to earn miles.

2x Miles for wholesale clubs and alcohol retailers

Costco

 

New and existing BMO AIR MILES Mastercard holders will now earn 2x miles on purchases made at eligible wholesale clubs (Costco is the big one!) and alcohol retailers.

  • The means BMO AIR MILES®† World Elite®* MasterCard®* collectors will earn 2 Miles for every $12 spent at any eligible wholesale club, or alcohol retailer in addition to already earning that rate at grocery stores.
  • While those using the BMO AIR MILES®† MasterCard®* will  earn 2 Miles for every $25 spent at any eligible wholesale club, or alcohol retailer in addition to already earning that rate at grocery stores.

For wholesale clubs, namely Costco but others as well, the BMO AIR MILES World Elite Mastercard becomes an excellent choice as earning 2 AIR MILES for every $12 works out to a 1.75% return on spending when redeemed as Cash Miles which are worth 10.5 cents each or about a 1.67% return when redeemed for travel (based on the cash+miles rate of approximately 10 cents per mile)

The returns are the same for alcohol retailers and this addition to the cards marks the first ‘true’ alcohol retail accelerator on a credit card albeit some of those retailers code as grocery stores so other card’s accelerated grocery earn rates have worked at some of these stores like Safeway Liquor, Ace Liquor etc. However, this is a bigger move for those provinces where liquor is still sold in government regulated provinces such as Ontario with the LCBO.

For the BMO AIR MILES Mastercard the 2 AIR MILES for every $25 works out to a 0.84% return on spending when redeemed as Cash Miles which are worth 10.5 cents each or about a 0.8% return when redeemed for travel (based on the cash+miles rate of approximately 10 cents per mile)

Alcohol retailers will be added to AIR MILES Receipts

 

The first major expansion of the AIR MILES Receipts program will take place on May 23, 2024 when alcohol retailers will be added to the mix! This will allow collectors to earn bonus miles on select products purchased at eligible alcohol retailers on or after that date.

Recommended reading: The Ultimate Guide to AIR MILES Receipts

Instacart added to AIR MILES Shops

 

In one additional piece of news from today’s announcement, AIR MILES collectors will now be able to earn miles when utilizing Instacart via AIR MILES Shops. If you have never used Instacart before you can earn 100 bonus miles on your first order made via Instacart. For all others the standard AIR MILES Shops earn rate of 1 Miles per $20 will apply.

NEW CUSTOMER OFFER: Get 100 Reward Miles on your first order. Terms apply. One offer per collector account. Please allow up to 60 days from the date of qualifying purchase for Reward Miles to be posted to your collector account.

  1. Sign in on airmilesshops.ca and click “Shop Now” to visit Instacart’s website.
  2. Create a new Instacart account and place your first order.

RETURNING CUSTOMER OFFER: Get 1 Reward Mile for every $20 spent, excluding taxes, delivery fees, and tips.

For both New and Returning Customer Offers, AIR MILES® Reward MilesTM will not be earned on the following:
• Purchases where a promo code is used
• Alcohol purchases
• Gift cards
• Purchases made directly through the Instacart mobile app
• Purchase of an Instacart+ monthly or annual membership.

Wrapping it up

This is great news for AIR MILES collectors who have or will consider getting one of the BMO AIR MILES Mastercards. To have additional accelerators for category spending outside of their partners is a welcome addition to these cards that were struggling to compete with many of the other cards in the market.

And add in the additional earning options of alcoholic products via AIR MILES Receipts and Instacart to AIR MILES Shops and you can see the program is continuing to climb out of the hole they were in just over a year ago. They are really making good efforts to once again become the loyalty program that many Canadians grew to love in the 90’s and 00’s.

Of course BMO and AIR MILES have to make these changes only a week after I updated the Top 5 Mastercards to use at Costco as lo an behold, the BMO®† AIR MILES® World Elite®* Mastercard®* is now the best card to use at Costco if you are not a Rogers customer! What a shift from BMO and AIR MILES!