We love the bonus offers we get with all credit cards. There are so many different types of points though – airline, hotel, and, my personal favorite, transferable points. The most flexible credit card points are transferable points. There are several types of transferable points including:

• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• American Express Membership Rewards
• Citi ThankYou Points
• Capital One Venture Miles

There is one key reason we are all about transferable points cards: FLEXIBILITY!!

Here are some reasons why transferable credit card points are so dang flexible:

Not Tied to a Particular Airline/Hotel

There are several different airline and hotel partners you can use transferable points for. Each card has there own partner and you can learn which card transfers to what partner here. Let’s say that you want to go to Hawaii and want to use credit card miles but you only have miles from United Airlines. In that case, you have no other option but to redeem your points with United. If you have Chase Ultimate Rewards you can shop around. You can look at booking with United but can also look into their other transfer partners as well, like Southwest and British Airways. You check award travel and Southwest is charging the least amount of points, you can transfer them to Southwest and use them for the flight. This allows you to shop around a lot more! The same thing goes for the hotel partners – more flexibility, more options.

Last-minute Options Are Easier

Need a last-minute flight? They can be really expensive if you have to pay with cash. However, if you have transferable points, you have tons of options. You are more likely to find a cheaper redeemable award flight when you can look at more than one airline. Again, flexibility is the #1 reason we love transferable points!

Not Tied Into Just a Hotel or Airline Redemption

Suppose you want to go to Europe and have airline miles but no hotel points. You might be stuck having to pay for a hotel. However, if you have transferrable points, you might have points that could transfer to Hyatt hotels. Flexibility is king once again.

 

Things to Consider

There are a couple of things to consider with transferable points though. One is that they don’t all transfer to a partner instantaneously. Some take a few hours or days so check out your particular points and plan accordingly.

Remember that it is a one-way transfer. You can transfer to the partner but not back to the credit card so make sure you want to do the transfer. Find those flights or hotel nights and make sure they are available before you transfer your points.

Bottom Line

Although all points/miles are insanely wonderful, we prefer to concentrate on transferable points. The number one reason is that they are the most flexible credit cards.  What transferable point credit cards do you own?