A transfer partner is an airline or hotel that partners with a credit card company. These partnerships allow you to transfer your credit card points/miles to a partner’s loyalty program. An example of this would be transferring your American Express Membership Rewards points to Delta Airlines or to Marriott Hotels.

There are a variety of transfer rates depending on the credit card company and the hotel or airfare program. Most commonly the rate is 1:1 meaning that 1 credit card point transferred to a partner program is equal to 1 partner’s miles/points (points are usually transferred in increments of 1,000). So transferring 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards points to Delta would give you 1,000 Delta miles. The question is, why would you do this? The answer, because by transferring your points, you can oftentimes get a much higher value for those points. The biggest value typically comes from booking high end luxury travel such as first-class international flights or 5-star hotels.

Here's an example of how you could maximize your points.

At the time of writing, there are four First Class seats available on Lufthansa Airlines from Washington D.C. (Washington Dulles International) to Munich, Germany on Saturday 6/3/23. Below is the screenshot of how many points it would be when booking through the American Express Travel Portal and a screenshot of how many points it would take to book the same flight when using Avianca LifeMiles (a transfer partner).

 As you can see from the above example, when booking a ticket such as first class, you can save a huge amount of points by effectively using transfer partners. (87,000 points vs 998,570) for the same ticket.

While there is certainly more value to be found with transfer partners, there are also some tradeoffs. One of the major issues is that once you transfer your points, there is no going back. This means that you are now committed to that airline or hotel’s program. Another drawback is with regard to availability, particularly with flights. If you were to book through the credit cards travel portal, you would see all the flight options available, whereas when booking through a loyalty program you will only see award availability meaning that only some flights will show. This can make it more difficult and require more searching when trying to book.

If you’re interested in seeing which credit card companies transfer to which airline and hotel programs and the current transfer rates, see the links below:

Citi ThankYou Rewards

Chase Ultimate Rewards

Capital One Miles

American Express Membership Rewards

TLDR:

• Transferring credit card points to transfer airline and hotel partners can help you get fantastic value.

• Each credit card company has different transfer partners (hotel and airline).

• There are different transfer rates depending on the program (see the above links for current transfer rates).

• Luxury travel will typically get you the most value for your points. Think First and Business Class flights and 5-star hotels.

• There are some drawbacks with transfer partners: you become committed to one program, less availability, may need to book further out or much closer to your travel date than you might be used to.

• Overall, transferring points is the best way to maximize the value of your points, but does require some time and effort to do so.