Points.com

Although I don’t know much about their business model, and I can’t vouch for them outside my specific experience, it’s worth mentioning a service of Points.com that I’ve found useful: transferring “points” from one “loyalty program” to another.

In my case, I had a bunch of otherwise useless “Esso Extra” points, accumulated from my gas purchases. Points.com let me transfer these points to my Air Canada Aeroplan account. The benefit wasn’t huge — 1020 Esso points (about $1000 worth of gas, redeemable at Esso for a free litre of oil) earned me 204 Aeroplan miles (about 1% of the miles required for a flight from Charlottetown to Boston), I imagine that in the hands of more dedicated loyalty program gamers, the site could provide some real benefit.