Relax, the RBA isn't going to stop us earning Points. Earn rates on Visa and MasterCard will probably reduce in 2016 onwards, but American Express Proprietary remains untouched from the regulation. So you can continue reaping the rewards for years to come.
Why relax?
Point earn is reducing. I will not start tilting against willmills, but I do not have to be happy about the changes.The bank issued Amex earnt on many things is at higher earn rate than the Amex issued ones. This decline in point earn across all these card types means that one earns less points.
Many of us operate a suite of cards to gain the highest earn rate. If all the bank issued Amex get reduced rate my earn on many things will drop from 1.5 KF (or QFF) / $ to just 1.0 (This includes both direct payment and paying through PayPal to get arround some comapanies that do not accept Amex).
For VISA/MC I had been using a fee free card to maximise my KF earn. This option is about to become less with the double wammy of less points earnt, and a pooer transfer rate. There are for the moment still some 1 QFF/$1.0 cards which I do not currently have. But who wants to earn QFF (They are my FF program of last resort).
Those who buy points by paying the surcharges (not I) will be even worse off.
From my perspective this is the second big point earning devaluation in recent years (others will count the ATO changes as a big (or bigger) loss for them as they could pump through vast amounts of taxes from businesses).
* This will probably mean that I will earn about one third less points from spend per year.
* Painful, but not as painful for me as Amex not running its points bonus promos any more (this dried up just over a year ago). These allowed me to earn many additional multiples of my yearly spend per year such that my base earn per $ was the much small amount of my yearly earn.
Credit card sign-on bonii are currently plentiful. But this has always come and gone with some years being lucrutive and others not so good.