RE:Prenez $$$$$Sadly, that article was a poor quality article. Aeroplan points are NOT free. When people use any credit card, especially a cedit card that has high spend clients, the banks get to recover a higher percentage from the merchants for each transaction. Some cards will provide cash back. Loyalty card managing banks ship over that cash to the company, in this case Air Canada, which in turn allocates the 'travel value' to the end client. Nothing is free. A dumb article by the Journal.