The MileagePlus X app – more commonly referred to as MPX – is perhaps best known as an app which allows you to buy third party gift cards and earning United MileagePlus miles in the process.
The app has a few additional features with one – United Visa Rewards – being particularly rewarding at times. That’s because it’s a card-linked program which not only stacks with other earning opportunities, but also sometimes offers promotions that can earn you loads of miles for very little spend.
It works a little differently to other card-linked programs though, so here’s a guide showing how to use United Visa Rewards.
How To Download MPX
MileagePlus X (MPX) is a free app which is available both in the Apple App Store and Google Play. You can download it using the links below:
How To Login With MPX
Seeing as MPX is an app created by United Airlines and involves earning bonus miles with them, you log in to the app using your MileagePlus account. If you’re not part of United’s loyalty program, you’ll need to register in order to use the app.
What Features Does The MPX App Offer?
MPX has a few different features. This guide will be focusing on United Visa Rewards, but here’s a quick rundown of all the app’s features.
- MileagePlus eGift Cards – This allows you to buy first-hand gift cards and earn bonus United miles per dollar spent. A benefit of the app is that you can buy gift cards for specific amounts (e.g. $14.17) rather than being forced to buy pre-determined denominations like $25, $50, etc.
If you have a United Chase card, you’ll earn 25% bonus miles when buying gift cards. Let’s say you want to buy a $10 gift card and the retailer is offering 4 miles per dollar. You’d earn 40 miles as standard, along with 10 bonus miles for having a United Chase card. That’s in addition to your regular credit card rewards. - United Visa Rewards – This is a card-linked program that allows you to earn bonus miles at certain retailers and restaurants.
- MileagePlus Dining – This program allows you to earn bonus miles when eating at certain restaurants and paying with a card you’ve linked to the program. You can often earn bonus miles when signing up to the program for the first time too.
Many airlines and hotel loyalty programs have dining programs which are all run on the same backend. You’re only able to have a card linked to one program, so it’s not possible to link a credit card to all the different dining programs and earn miles and points with every single one for the same transaction. - MileagePlus Shopping – This is a shopping portal which rewards you for shopping online. You can also access the United shopping portal here.
- Featured Apps – If you plan on using any of the apps featured in this section of the MileagePlus X app, be sure to tap through to them from this section in order to earn bonus miles. It’s a little like a shopping portal for apps you might already have downloaded on your phone. For example, at the time of writing this guide you could tap through to Groupon if you have that app on your phone and earn 11 bonus miles per dollar spent on Local deals or 7 bonus miles per dollar if tapping through to the Overstock app.
Who Can Use United Visa Rewards?
Anyone can download and use the MPX app – all you need is a United MileagePlus account which is free to set up.
To use the United Visa Rewards feature in the app though, you need to have a Chase United credit card. My understanding is that it has to be a personal card, but let me know in the comments below if you have access to United Visa Rewards with a Chase United business credit card.
Seeing as your United credit card is tied to your MileagePlus account in order for you to earn miles when using the card, I think United Visa Rewards is available to you automatically as a cardholder. It’s been almost a year since I got my United credit card though, so I can’t remember if I had to manually add the card number in the app to register for United Visa Rewards.
How Does United Visa Rewards Work?
As mentioned earlier, United Visa Rewards is a card-linked program. To take advantage of these specific offers, you have to pay with your United credit card.
That can be a shame at times as it means you could be missing out on an alternative earning method. For example, several offers that appear in the app are bonus miles for spend at select restaurant chains. The United credit card only earns 1 mile per dollar on dining, whereas other cards are far more rewarding on dining spend such as the Amex Gold card which earns 4x Membership Rewards.
It might still be worth paying with your United card though because the bonus miles earned with United Visa Rewards can potentially outweigh the rewards earned when paying with a different credit card.
To take advantage of the program, you have to load offers to your card. Loading offers is done in a different manner to all other apps and programs that I can think of, so it’s important to know how to do that.
How To Load Offers On United Visa Rewards
To load offers to your United credit card, you don’t have to specifically click any buttons to add them. Instead, you simply have to view them in the app. When tapping on United Visa Rewards for the first time, you’ll see the following blurred images:
After a few seconds the offers themselves will be visible on your screen. Once you can see them, that means they’re linked to your United credit card – there’s nothing else you need to do.
Occasionally you’ll have a stubborn offer which simply won’t stop being blurry. Just go back a screen to the MPX home screen and tap back through to United Visa Rewards and that should do the trick.
It’s worth periodically checking the app as new retailers are sometimes added to United Visa Rewards, plus there’s something you important to know about how the offers expire.
Important Note Regarding Expiry Dates
Something important to note is that most of the offers expire after a week. They rarely actually expire though; if you go back in to United Visa Rewards a week later, you’ll likely see the same offers there still.
What you need to be aware of though is that because the offers “expire”, you have to reload them to your card before redeeming the offer if it’s been more than a week since you first loaded it.
Let’s say you have an offer giving 10x bonus miles at Panera Bread which you add on September 1 and so has an expiry date of September 8. If you went to Panera on September 10, you’d need to view the offer in the app again beforehand in order to re-link it to your United card.
Important Note Regarding Terms & Conditions
A slightly strange feature of United Visa Rewards is that the terms of an offer aren’t always clear. For example, in the image above there’s an offer for Chili’s which gives 5 bonus miles per dollar on up to $200 of spend (due to the limit of 1,000 bonus miles).
In the bottom left corner it says “Online Only” which makes it seem like you can only use the offer for online orders. However, tapping on the offer displayed the following full terms of the offer:
As you can see, the terms listed there state it’s valid for in-store purchases. I’ve checked with a different offer and have verified that if the terms state it’s valid for in-store purchases, in-store transactions will indeed track even if the initial image states it’s online only.
I tested this with a Barnes & Noble offer. United Visa Rewards was offering 10 bonus miles per dollar on up to $100 of spend. My wife used my card to spend $19.20 on books in-store and I received 192 miles as a result. If I knew for sure that we’d be spending more money at Barnes & Noble in the future, I’d have just had her buy a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card to max out the offer, but I don’t know how frequently we’ll end up shopping there.
How To Redeem Offers
Redeeming United Visa Rewards offers is straightforward. You simply pay for a transaction with an eligible retailer using your United Visa card and it should automatically track.
Provided you haven’t turned off app notifications, the MPX app will send a push notification to your phone advising that you’ve redeemed an offer.
When Are Bonus Miles From United Visa Rewards Awarded?
One of the great features of United Visa Rewards is that the bonus miles are awarded very quickly. I mentioned earlier that we redeemed an offer at Barnes & Noble. That purchase was on August 10 and two days later the 192 miles showed up in my United MileagePlus account.
If you tap on ‘Completed Offers’ in the MPX app, you’ll see the transaction listed there too.
How Many Times Can You Redeem Offers?
Unless the terms state otherwise, you can only use an offer once, after which time it’ll disappear from the app. It’s therefore important to bear this in mind if you’ll be making more than one purchase at an eligible retailer.
For example, let’s say you wanted to buy a book at Barnes & Noble today but know you need to buy a couple of expensive textbooks in a few weeks. You’d likely be better off buying the cheaper book now with a different card, then buying the expensive textbooks with your United card to maximize your earnings. If doing that, be sure to remember to re-link the offer to your card before that future purchase.
How To Stack Offers
One of the great features of United Visa Rewards offers is that you can often stack them with other deals. Here are a few examples:
- Restaurant – Some restaurants run promotions on their gift cards, such as ‘Buy $50 gift card & get $10 bonus card free’. You could buy a gift card in-restaurant to lock in the rewards from the United offer while also earning the $10 bonus card.
- Shopping portals – Seeing as United Visa Rewards is a card-linked program, it stacks with shopping portals. If taking advantage of the Barnes & Noble offer online rather than in-store, you could click through from a shopping portal to earn cashback/miles/points while also earning 10 miles per dollar by paying with your United credit card.
- In-Store Card-Linked Programs – Some shopping portals like Rakuten and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan offer in-store deals. You link a payment card with the shopping portal and pay in-store. You earn cashback/miles/points from the shopping portal and bonus miles via United Visa Rewards.
Remember that the bonus MileagePlus miles you earn from United Visa Rewards is in addition to the standard miles you earn for regular spend on your United credit card.
My Ultimate Stack
The best example of how you can stack United Visa Rewards with other offers is what I managed to put together when buying a $60 Costco membership:
- United Visa Rewards – 720 miles
- Uber Visa Rewards – $15 Uber Cash
- Dosh – $10 cashback
- Costco Membership Deal – $30 Costco Shop Card
- United Credit Card – 60 miles
Check out this post for further detail about how those stacking opportunities worked.
Promotions
Another great feature of United Visa Rewards is that they sometimes offer additional bonus miles for completing offers. For example, at the time of writing this post they’re running the following promotion:
- Complete 1st offer, get 1,000 miles
- Complete 2nd offer, get 1,500 additional miles
- Complete 3rd offer, get 2,000 additional miles
- Complete 4th offer, get 2,500 additional miles
- Complete 5th offer, get 3,000 additional miles
Those bonuses are cumulative, so if you complete all five offers, you’ll end up with a total of 10,000 bonus miles. That’s on top of the bonus miles you’ll earn from United Visa Rewards in the first place.
In theory, you could buy $5 or $10 gift cards at a number of eligible retailers and restaurants to trigger the offers. That can be a cheap and easy way to bank a bunch of miles, plus you’ll have the gift cards for future use.
Questions?
I think that covers all the stuff you need to know about how United Visa Rewards works, but let me know in the comments below if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
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