Greenpoints has just increased the number of points per dollar they pay for shopping through their program. They had been paying a flat 10 points per dollar for all of their merchants, with the exception of FTD.com, for which they paid 50 points per dollar. Now, Greenpoints is paying 20 points, or 100 for FTD.
The cost to cash out, at least at the $25 level, remains unchanged (a $25 GC is 20,900 points). This means that they have not changed the value of their points, but when you shop, you earn twice what you did before. This is a pretty unusual move for a rewards program — usually if they begin to pay more per dollar, they’ll increase the number of points to cash out to make up for the difference.
Greenpoints may not be finished making changes to their program; when you click on “EARN – smartshop” it still says “Earn 10 greenpoints for every $1 spent…” However, when you click “see merchants A-Z” and then click on a store name, the popup says that you’ll earn 20. This could be temporary, or it could be followed soon by increases in the points needed to cash out. But even if this is a permanent thing, it’s still nothing to get very excited about, IMHO.
20 Greenpoints per dollar translates to a 2.4% rebate. This is still very low for some merchants like Magazines.com, where you could earn 20% elsewhere. However, it is nice for purchases at BestBuy.com, for example, where most rewards programs may just offer 1% or so.
