How To Transfer Credit Card Rewards To Frequent Flyer Points

Earning frequent flyer points is one of the most popular choices for people with rewards cards, but not all credit cards will automatically send points to your airline rewards account.

Whether you are a member of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, Virgin’s Velocity Rewards, Singapore Airline’s KrisFlyer club or any number of other airline loyalty options, chances are there will be a rewards card that allows you to earn even more points towards flights and other benefits.

In fact, many of the credit cards now available are considered specific frequent flyer options that will be linked directly to one of these programs.

The ANZ Frequent Flyer and NAB Qantas cards, for example, both allow cardholders to earn Frequent Flyer points directly. Similarly, the Citibank Emirates Platinum and Virgin Flyer each earn loyalty program points for their respective airlines.

With any of these cards you do not usually have to transfer reward points from your credit card to the rewards program, but the downside is that rewards are limited to frequent flyer redemption options.

While most of these programs do offer a range of rewards, credit card rewards may provide more diversity in what you can do with your points, which is why many people choose to get a more general rewards card.

Most of these cards also allow people to transfer their points to frequent flyer programs when they want to, so there are even more options for what they can do with the points earned and which airline they would like to transfer points to.

The Citibank Rewards card, for example, gives members the option of manually transferring points to a number of different frequent flyer programs, including Virgin’s Velocity Rewards, Singapore Air’s KrisFlyer program and the Asia Miles program.

Similarly, American Express cards that offer Membership Rewards, like the Gold Ascent, can transfer their points to seven different frequent flyer partners including Air New Zealand, Virgin Australia, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines.

While the redemption process will vary from card to card, the following general steps should help you transfer your credit card points into frequent flyer points:

1. Log into your credit card account
2. Check your points balance
3. Click on “redeem”
4. Select the appropriate redemption category, eg. Travel
5. Find the frequent flyer program you want to transfer points to; and
6. Click on “transfer my points”

There may be a few steps after this depending on your credit card, but once the steps above are done it should be a simple matter of following the prompts.

For people who are members of a number of different airline loyalty programs, having a card with a range of different transfer options will allow you to get the most out of your credit card and your frequent flyer programs.