Transferable point cards are the ones that all the big influencers and bloggers love to showcase—they provide tremendous value when used correctly.
These cards are essentially a special hybrid of hotel/airline & fixed value cashback cards. With your transferable points, you have the option to use them to book airline/hotel partners by "transferring" them to the designated partner, or you can straight up book travel with those points.
What Are Transferable Points?
Ok, this confused me for a long time as well, but let's try to make it clear.
When you earn points/miles with a card issuer, they are accumulated rewards under the bank. You might have the option to redeem them as statement credit, gift cards, or as travel via the bank's travel portal, but there's another thing you can do: you can move your points from the card issuer to a "partner" airline/hotel.
As described by the image above, I earn points using a Chase card, those are then accumulated as "Ultimate Rewards" points, and then I can move my Ultimate Rewards to any of Chase's partners. For example, I can (irreversibley) transfer 1,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points to United Airlines and then use those points to book flights on United Airlines.
What Transferable Point Programs Exist?
To understand what "transferable point cards" are, we must start with looking at the key transferable point programs.
There are several transferable point programs out there offered by many recognizable banks. However, not all programs are built equally. This section will walk you through some of the most popular ones and highlight some of the "transfer partners" for each one.
Chase Ultimate Rewards
Whether you earn cashback or points on a Chase card, they're pretty much always funneled to one metric: the "Ultimate Rewards point." If you don't have one of Chase's premium cards (e.g. the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card), if you try to redeem these points, the max value you will get is 1 cent per point. If you try to redeem these via Chase Travel℠, you will also only get 1 cent per point.
However, once you have one of Chase's premium cards (e.g. the Chase Sapphire Reserve®), you will be able to redeem your points via the portal at either 1.25 or 1.5 cents per point, depending on which card you have. Again, cashback you earn on a card like the Chase Freedom Unlimited® will be converted to a singular Ultimate Reward point metric, meaning you can earn on the Freedom Unlimited and then use your points to get more value alongside a premium Chase card.
Chase has a healthy number of transfer partners, including the likes of United Airlines, Air France/KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic, and World of Hyatt. Many love using Chase points for World of Hyatt, as it's super easy to get more than 1.5 cents per point when redeeming against Hyatt properties.
American Express Membership Rewards
AMEX Membership Reward points (aka "MR") are also very widely popular. Only a certain subset of AMEX cards earn MRs (e.g. American Express® Gold Card), but any card that earns MR will all funnel into that one single metric. You can redeem your AMEX points for gift cards, statement credit, travel, and more, but typically, the best way to get the most value out of your points is, again, leveraging transfer partners.
If you have The Business Platinum Card® from American Express, you can even earn a 35% rebate on travel booked via the portal. This means that you're effectively getting 1.53 cents per point, but that's only if you have the card on hand.
AMEX also has a slew of awesome transfer partners, including the likes of Delta, ANA, Avianca Lifemiles, Qantas, and Virgin Atlantic. Notably, AMEX has exclusive issuer transfer partner rights to Delta and ANA, meaning no other bank can transfer points to either airline.
Capital One Miles
Capital One likes to call their "points" miles, even though the language doesn't really make sense... since you technically need to transfer C1 miles to become airline-specific miles...
Anyways, C1 rocked the world a few years ago with the introduction of the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, a powerful travel card competitor. Similar to Chase, cashback you earn on cards like the Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card can be converted to miles, increasing their value from 1 cent per mile to much higher with the help of transfer partners. While you could redeem your C1 miles in the travel portal, that's probably not the best way to get the most value of them.
Capital One doesn't have any major US domestic airline transfer partners, but that doesn't mean its options are that much weaker. C1 has access to Turkish Miles & Smiles, TAP, Avianca Lifemiles, Air Canada, and many more. These airlines can all be used to book domestic US flights via partner bookings.
What Transferable Point Cards Exist?
There are a lot of credit cards out there with transferable point partners. Here are some highlights of cards with transferable points that you can leverage to book high-value flights:
Ok, This Is A Lot Of Information—I'm Confused. What Card Do I get?
The first hurdle of the game is to decide if you want to pursue a transferable point card (like one of the above options) or a pure cashback card. If you value simplicity, then I would say a fixed value cashback card would be easier to use, as it requires much less effort than using your points. However, if you like deals and flying international, I think getting a transferable points card is best.
One caveat: given Chase and Bilt have access to Hyatt as a transfer partner, I think it's just as simple to just use your points for Hyatt bookings as it is for pure cashback. So, don't fear Chase simply because it has transfer partners—you can still get a lot of value by getting a Chase card.
There is also a strong argument to getting both cashback and point cards. For example, the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express earns a whopping 6% on grocery (up to $6,000 per year in purchases, then 1%). It might be hard to use a points card that only earns 3x on that category, since there's a higher breakeven associated.
Conclusion
Transferable point cards have a lot of potential to deliver tremendous outsized value. By transferring to partners, you can start to unlock more than just 1 cent per point. However, there are a lot of options out there, and it can be tricky to determine the right starting point. Personally speaking, transferable point cards are some of the best in the game, and can really make some travel dreams come true.
