What Is The Latest Update On AMEX GyFTR In 2026?

Amex is a multinational financial services corporation and bank holding company. Amex is popular among its users for its premium credit cards, charge cards and global payment network.

GyFTR is a digital platform in India which was in collaboration with Amex. Using it you can buy and send digital gift vouchers and cards.

On February 1, 2026 American Express officially discontinued its partnership with GyFTR. With the end of AMEX GyFTR collab.

AMEX shifted its e voucher platform entirely to the e voucher platform ShopWise.

How AMEX works:

AMEX provides its services through a closed-loop payment system. Additionally, as it uses a closed loop payment system AMEX does not need to partner with banks to issue cards like Visa or Mastercard.

Rather AMEX acts as both the card issuer and the transaction processor. Furthermore, AMEX has the advantage to offer robust customer service and premium rewards as they handle the entire system.

How The Network Works

• Firstly, Amex works on Closed-Loop System. Because of this reason AMEX can make direct interactions with the cardholder and the merchant. Moreover they don’t need to rely on any third party bank to process transactions. It allows them to tightly manage the party’s credit limits and analyze their spending data.
• Secondly, AMEX can authenticate and approve transactions and can pay the merchant directly through their proprietary network. 

Card Types

Credit Cards: Amex offers traditional credit cards. With the minimum payment it allows the customer to carry a balance from month to month which is subject to interest charges.

Charge Cards: AMEX provides AMEX charge cards like Amex Gold Card and Amex Platinum card. Moreover, there are no pre-set spending limits in these charge cards but the customer needs to pay the full balance at the end of each billing cycle.

Card Usage

• Merchant fees: In order to accept AMEX cards, businesses need to pay a higher transaction fee. By doing so they can access high-spending, loyal customers.
• Annual fees: AMEX premium cards charge high annual fees from customers. In return they provide facilities like airport lounge access and concierge services.
• Interest: AMEX earns interest revenue from cardholders who carry a revolving balance like any other credit card companies.

Why The AMEX GyFTR Collaboration Broke

Any AMEX cardholder can say that AMEX doesn’t compromise with the quality of service. 

Maybe, AMEX found ShopWise to be a better collaborator and made this change to provide a more modern and transparent digital service and provide cardholders a seamless experience.

Key Motivations:

• Improved Transparency: Firstly, the older GyFTR portal did not show the Membership Reward (MR) points earned by a customer. Unlike that, the new ShopWise interface displays the exact Membership Rewards (MR) points with denominations and remaining monthly purchases to the customer before checkout.
• Better User Experience: Secondly, the interface of ShopWise is faster and clearer. It provides a more modern digital experience than GyFTR. 
• Customer friendly layout: Additionally, the more intuitive layout in ShopWise is very helpful for the customers to manage monthly limits.
• Brand Availability: Moreover, ShopWise features expanded brand catalogs and categories which weren’t available on GyFTR. On ShopWise customers can search through more than 200 partnered brands.
• Checkout Failures: Finally, customers criticised the GyFTR as they had to face system crashes very often. Which used to increase during peak sales or heavy traffic days.

Amex Reward Multiplier Program

In India AMEX provides a key benefit which is Reward Multiplier. This program helps a customer to earn extra Membership Rewards points. Moreover the Membership Reward points can be 5X to 10X when the customer buys e-vouchers from partner brands depending on the card.

Popular Platforms Included

Marketplaces:

• Amazon
• Flipkart
• Myntra
• Nykaa
• Tata CLiQ

Travel:

• MakeMyTtrip
• Cleartrip
• Yatra

Luxury and jewelry:

• Tanishq
• Malabar Gold and Diamonds

Fashion:

• Marks and Spencers
• Uniqlo
• Aldo
• Levi’s
• Superdry

Beauty and wellness:

• Forest Essentials
• Kama Ayurveda
• Bath and Body Works
• Mamaearth 

Food and dining:

• Zomato
• Swiggy 

Features

• Firstly, this program allows the customer to reach the card’s spending milestone faster
• Secondly, with the help of this program the customer can earn more rewards on everyday purchases
• Thirdly, with this program if the customer buys voucher smartly, the customer can reduce the effective cost of the premium card

How Will This Shift Effect AMEX Card Holders

In my personal opinion, the shift to ShopWise can be said to be a big upgrade and AMEX cardholders should not see this as a fundamental change in economics.

Moreover, the same Reward Multiplier structure remains, what changes is the way the customer used to interact with vouchers which has become more customer friendly.

In my opinion, the platform is cleaner and more predictable for the customer than earlier.

The customer can continue to use the Reward Multiplier for various reasons:

• Firstly, the customer can use the Reward Multiplier to meet milestone targets, which can be 1000 bonus points for 4 transactions of 1000 rupees or more per month on MRCC)
• Secondly, the customer can optimise the monthly spending through voucher purchases
• Lastly, the customer can access more than 200 brands across retail, dining, travel and many others. Moreover the customer can earn Membership Rewards points the same way

ShopWise Early Issues

Though the general response has been positive for ShopWise, some customers faced and reported glitches which occurred for a few days after the launch of ShopWise. The issues are:

• Offline voucher issues: Some offline vouchers were declined at physical stores like Reliance Digital. This problem occurred because staff were not used to the new format.
• Checkout and order problems: Some users reported failed transactions though they resolved later. This is generally an early launch issue which generally does not take much time to get resolved

Conclusion

In my opinion, AMEX cardholders have nothing to worry about the end of AMEX GyFTR collaboration.

Moreover, the customers are going to be benefited by the shift to ShopWise. Though the previous AMEX GyFTR collaboration ended, Cardholders will be able to avail new benefits because of this shift to ShopWise.

Though there were several reported early launch issues, the platform is proving to be more customer friendly and reliable.