TimesPoint Referral Code

TimesPoints is a loyalty currency rather than an earning scheme, and that distinction is the useful thing to understand about it.

TimesPoints is Times Internet's loyalty currency. You accumulate it through activity across the group's digital properties and redeem it against rewards in its own catalogue. A signup bonus of 100 points is the usual entry.

We have not published a rupee value for a TimesPoint, because we could not source a fixed redemption rate. That is a meaningful omission rather than an oversight: in loyalty programmes the redemption rate is frequently not fixed at all, varying by reward and by campaign, which is precisely why it is rarely stated plainly. If you find the rate in your own account, that is the operative number.

The more useful framing is what kind of thing this is. A loyalty currency is not an earning scheme. It is designed to reward and retain engagement with a group of properties you were using anyway — reading, browsing, transacting across the network — rather than to pay you for work. Judged as an earning opportunity it will disappoint, in the same way an airline's frequent flyer scheme would. Judged as a small return on activity you already do, it is reasonable.

That also tells you how to value the signup bonus. 100 points at the start of a loyalty programme is an onboarding nudge, not a payment, and it is worth exactly as much as the catalogue makes it worth.

The practical questions are the same as for any points scheme. What is the redemption threshold before anything can be claimed? Does the catalogue contain things you would actually want, or only things you would never buy? And do points expire — loyalty currencies commonly do, on a rolling basis from when they are earned, which quietly removes balances that are never spent.

If the answer to the second question is no, the programme has no value to you regardless of how many points you accumulate. That is the test worth applying before spending any effort on it.