United miles are great, and so are Southwest points, but I would rather have Chase’s points that transfer directly to both United and to Southwest as well as to a variety of other programs like British Airways and Hyatt.

Similar flexibility exists for American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One’s and Citibank’s points, and Bilt Rewards. Transferable currencies, that let you move points into a variety of programs, are more valuable than any single airline or hotel program’s points. But which one of these currencies is the most valuable? There are subtle but important differences in each.

• This is about the value of the points earned – not the speed at which you earn them. For instance you could put airfare on a platinum card, groceries and dining on Gold and everything else on a Blue business and earn Membership Rewards quite quickly – faster than most will earn Citi points because the Prestige card is no longer available to new customers. Bilt has only one card.

• But it helps you answer, would I rather have 200,000 Chase points, Bilt points, Membership Rewards points, Capital One points, Amex points or Citi transferable points? In which program is a single point worth the most?

Answering this question starts with looking at the transfer partners each program has (they’re all different), which partners provide the most value, and also how flexible each currency is when you want to use your points directly against a paid ticket or hotel night rather than redeeming for a free flight or free hotel award night.

Singapore Suites, two suites combine and offer double beds

Here Are The Transfer Partners Of Each Program

The primary benefit of travel rewards cards from big banks is the ability to transfer points to your choice of airline or hotel loyalty program. Instead of earning a single currency, like United’s miles, you earn points that can be redeemed directly as cash against paid fares or transferred to your preferred points.

For instance if you earn Chase points you can transfer to United or other miles, if you earn American Express points you can transfer to Delta or other miles. That’s better than ‘just’ earning United or Delta miles directly. You have choice, and the ability to put points where you need them based on the trip you’re trying to book and who has award availability.

So in assessing which program is best (and best for you!) the best place to start is comparing which transfer partners are part of each bank’s program:

	Chase	Amex	Citi	Cap One	Bilt
Star Alliance
Air Canada	X	X		X	X
All Nippon		X
Avianca		X	X	X	X
EVA			X	X
Singapore Airlines	X	X	X	X
TAP				X
THAI			X
Turkish Airlines			X	X	X
United Airlines	X				X
oneworld
American					X
British Airways	X	X		X	X
Cathay Pacific		X	X	X	X
Finnair				X
Iberia	X	X			X
Malaysia Airlines			X
Qantas		X	X	X
Qatar		X	X
SkyTeam
Aeromexico		X	X	X
Air France	X	X	X	X	X
Delta		X
Virgin Atlantic	X	X	X	X	X
Non-alliance
Aer Lingus	X	X			X
Emirates	X	X	X	X	X
Etihad		X	X	X
Hawaiian		X			X
JetBlue	X	X	X
Southwest Airlines	X
Hotels
Accor			X	X
Choice		X	X	X
Hilton		X
Hyatt	X				X
IHG	X				X
Leading Hotels Of The World			X
Marriott	X	X			X
Wyndham			X	X

Etihad Premium Cabin Awards Currently Only Bookable More Than 60 Days Out Using Etihad’s Own Points

Comparing Airline Points Transfer Options

Air France KLM has the best SkyTeam frequent flyer program. All of the programs transfer to their Flying Blue program. You might make an argument that Korean Air SKYPASS is the better SkyTeam program, but in the U.S., US Bank has exclusivity with them, and none of the banks transfer there anymore (Chase used to). This isn’t an area of meaningful differentiation.

American is the best oneworld frequent flyer program. For distance-based awards you may want access to an Avios program. Bilt is the only program that transfers to American, and they have British Airways and Iberia for Avios. They also have Cathay Pacific which offers lower fuel surcharges. The only other differentiator here is Qantas, for better availability on their own flights, but those are pretty expensive and won’t trump having American as a transfer partner.

Within Star Alliance I’d say the best general all-purpose program is Air Canada Aeroplan, and they partner with Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt. Beyond that, the best values are with ANA (American Express) and Turkish (Bilt, Capital One, Citi). ANA transfers take a couple of days, which makes them less useful – you need to make proactive transfers, but then their points expire if unused. Turkish is tough to work with sometimes.

ANA’s First Class Meals Are Incredible

There’s value in Singapore (for premium cabin flights on their own planes) and EVA Air (for great availability on their own flights). Most people like United as a U.S. airline partner, and both Chase and Bilt transfer there, but MileagePlus just isn’t as good a program as the rest – you likely only should be working through them to (1) top off miles you’re earning flying as a U.S.-based customer, and (2) for extra availability at higher prices on their own flights.

So maybe Capital One is best for Star Alliance redemptions, even though they don’t have a U.S. based transfer partner? But it’s not a win by a lot, and I consider Chase, Bilt and American Express all competitive in this category.

Comparing Hotel Points Transfer Options

Chase and Bilt offer transfers to Hyatt. That makes them the top two programs for hotel points transfers, because Hyatt offers the best value at 1:1.

It would go to far to say that Hyatt is the only decent hotel points transfer partner. With a 50% transfer bonus from American Express to Hilton you’ll get alright value. More importantly,

• There’s actually some value in Citi transfers to Choice Privileges (because they’re 1:2). They have some premium partner properties, and if you’re taking a whole sports team somewhere it’s probably to a town with Choice hotels. The value in top properties isn’t terrible, but they’re pain to book. And there are too many place you won’t want to stay.
  
• In addition, there’s decent value in Citi transfers to Leading Hotels of the World at the high end, too.

I’ve Stayed On Points Twice at Bora Bora Nui

Mostly, though, the problem with hotel points transfers is that they’re usually set up 1:1 (or 1:2) but hotel points operate on a different scale, with each point worth less than an airline mile. The problem isn’t the transfer partners as much as the transfer ratios. Hyatt is the only one where there’s strong value at 1:1.

Park Hyatt Hadahaa, Maldives

Transfer Bonuses

American Express was the leader in offering transfer bonuses for many years, along with Diners Club which I don’t write about here because you can no longer get a U.S.-issued Diners Club card and because that program is a shell of its former self.

The Membership Rewards program actively offered 20%, 30%, or even larger bonuses from time to time with many of its transfer partners. That’s something Capital One copied, and with increasing competition we’ve seen greater activity from Chase and even Citibank.

What I love about this is that they usually ‘take turns’ with partners like Air France KLM Flying Blue and with Virgin Atlantic, so someone often has a transfer bonus when I happen to need one. However I value the flexibility in having the option to move my points wherever I want, whenever I need to, that these bonuses don’t tempt me for their own sake. Having 20% more points with British Airways Executive Club isn’t enough to compensate me for the lost flexibility in being able to move my points to any partner unless I know I have a near-term specific use for points in BA’s Executive Club.

The only exception to this is what Bilt Rewards has been doing. They were the first program ever to offer 100% bonuses to a 1:1 transfer partner (well, Delta and American Express did it once 15 years ago but that was a glitch, hah). They’ve offered 100% or better bonuses to Hawaiian Airlines, Air France KLM, Virgin Atlantic, and Emirates as well as IHG One Rewards.

Emirates Airbus A380 First Class Shower Spa

What Bilt has started doing is offering tiered transfer bonuses based on elite status in their program, often ranging from 75% to 150%. I took advantage of a 150% transfer bonus, moving 200,000 Bilt points to 500,000 Virgin points.

These bonuses, when offered, are available for just a single day (the first of the month, “Rent Day”) in contrast to the more modest offerings of bank programs which usually run for a few weeks or a month. Longer bonuses are great for happening to be able to take advantage of a bonus when you go to redeem, while these big one-off bonuses are great for proactively moving points given how valuable the offers are.

When I’ve needed Air France KLM Flying Blue points I’ve been able to take advantage of small bonuses that happen to be going on – I’ll look across programs to see which one has the best transfer offer. However I’ve jumped on offers from Bilt that are bigger and more lucrative than what anyone else has put into the market. I far prefer what Bilt is doing, making my points worth 2.5 times as much in some cases rather than just 30% more, but others may prefer just having offers ongoing in the background.

Comparing Travel Portal Booking Options

Chase and Bilt both offer to let you use your cash towards paid trips at better than 1 cent apiece. That trumps standard 1 cent offerings from other programs.

• Chase Sapphire Reserve customers can use their points at 1.5 cents apiece
  
• Sapphire Preferred and Bilt customers can use their points at 1.25 cents

I don’t love these options because you have to book through their agency offerings (e.g. Bilt is a branded Expedia product) and that means dealing with those agencies for customer service. It’s fine when things go fine, and your initial online booking just works. But getting customer service is always a time-consuming affair and that’s if things go right.

The Amex Business Platinum offers a 35% rebate on pay with points bookings made for flights with your selected airline, or all business and first class flights. That gets you 1.54 cents apiece towards air travel, and it’s better to be booking air travel through a card portal than hotels – because with hotels you’ll be giving up elite status benefits, credit towards earning status, and hotel points-earning since you’ve booked through a third party agency.

However the pay with points rebate is limited to the Business Platinum and Centurion (50% rebate) cards, and isn’t available with other Amex products – it’s not a Membership Rewards benefit as such.

Here Sapphire Reserve > Business Platinum > Bilt and Sapphire Preferred (maybe a slight edge to Bilt, which doesn’t exclude Disney redemptions) which in turn is better than American Express, Chase, Capital One and Citi portal bookings generally.

Conclusion: Bilt Rewards Is Beating The Rest

Bilt is strong across the board – with the best oneworld partner, one of the best programs for Star Alliance, and one of the best travel portal options. They also offer much larger transfer bonuses than any other program.

American Express has ANA as a transfer partner setting themselves apart, but outside of their most premium business cards they don’t have a good portal. Chase has a good portal, but none of the niche transfer partners. Capital One lacks any U.S. airline transfer partner.

Bilt Rewards doesn’t have as long a track record as Membership Rewards or even Ultimate Rewards. But they are over two years old and they haven’t lost partners yet. They are well-capitalized. So I feel very good about my balance there even if they are maybe rewarding me a little too much (or maybe my expectations for everyone else just aren’t high enough).

When I last looked at this question two years ago I considered a Chase point with a Sapphire Reserve worth marginally more than a Bilt point. Since then Bilt has added partners (like Avianca and Marriott) and instituted regular transfer bonuses, launched their travel portal at 1.25 cents per point value making them more valuable – plus developed a track record.

And they’ve introduced free access to premium tools like point.me for airline awards and Awayz for hotel awards to help you get the most out of your points with their transfer partners. In other words, I’ve had to revise my value of Bilt upward relative to competitors.

Playing At Scale

I’ve been focused on earning Bilt points because I already work with seven figure balances with both Chase and American Express. I like to diversify my points across airlines and hotels with transferable bank points, and then diversify across bank points.

That’s a hedge against changes in any one program. It also gives me options when booking awards, so that I have access to as many redemptions as possible. It also lets me take advantage of whatever transfer bonuses are live when I need to make a transfer – since the only transfer bonuses that ever tempt me to move points speculatively are Bilt’s 150% bonuses. I don’t ever move points on the if-come for a 20% or 30% bonus, but I love having one of those available when I happen to want to make a transfer.

When considering what your second or third transferable points program should be, though, especially at early stages it helps that they share some transfer partners in common.

That means you can earn in multiple transferable points programs and then pool your points in a single airline frequent flyer program to book rewards. That’s great because it means initial card bonuses can all go to the same place, if that makes sense. It also means you can pick and choose which card you want to use based on which earns the most points for a given type of spending.

It doesn’t always make sense to do this. For instance you may be able to pool points from several programs into British Airways, but they may charge too much for an award. And you might already have points in a United MilaegePlus account and be looking to top that account off for an award, in which case supplementing with Chase makes more sense. However ‘transfer partners in common’ is a very useful feature to be thinking about.

The most ubiquitous partners are Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin and Emirates which are partners of all of these programs.

Air Canada, Avianca, Singapore, BA, and Cathay partner with 4 programs apiece. Air Canada Aeroplan is a very useful partner. BA, Singapore, Cathay and Virgin are strategically useful though less so than Aeroplan and Flying Blue.