EDIT: Alright, so with FroggieDaFrog's assistance, I was able to finally narrow, and find the problem. It was an open JSON handler that was not closing, and it had a name of the new handler I was trying to use... /jsonlist /jsonclose and now it works like it should.
just check version. Appears I am using the older version: "JSONForMirc v.0.2.4"
I also updated my code to better match what you gave:
JSONOpen -duw points <url>
JSONURLMethod points GET
JSONUrlHeader points x-api-key <key-removed>
JSONUrlGet points
echo -a fan: $json(points, loyalty, fan)
echo -a Total: $JSON(points, loyalty, total_points)
echo -a Current: $JSON(points, loyalty, current_points)
echo -a Updated: $JSON(points, loyalty, updated_at)
output is still nothing for each of the values. I thought I was going in the right direction, seeing as how I was missing the "JSONUrlGet points" but it did not seem to change anything.
Note: I was able to get the data I needed through normal sockets using the suggested tips without using json parser, but it was a pain having to tokenize sections of the response, and then even substring. Would be nice to have the json parser working!