Transfer Bonuses!

What is a Transfer Bonus?
Essentially - it's free points or miles!

Transfer bonuses are a limited time promotion where bank/partner programs will offer extra points to transfer your flexible bank points to a specific hotel or loyalty program. Banks frequently (sometimes monthly, sometimes sporadically) announce transfer bonuses, which means if you transfer points from the bank to the partner with the bonus, you’ll get more points for free with that partner, just for transferring! 

In order to take advantage of these bonuses, you need to transfer your flexible bank points to the travel partner with the bonus. Not familiar with how to transfer points or which hotels/airlines partner with which banks? You can learn how to transfer points here, Chase Transfer Partners here, American Express transfer partners here and Capital One's here. 

Keep in mind.. once you transfer points, you cannot transfer them back to your bank. They are then "stuck" in whichever airline/hotel partner you transferred to. Transfers from banks to airline or hotel partners are irreversible.

It is NOT recommended to transfer points from a bank to a travel partner, just because there's a bonus. It's generally best to keep your points flexible until you're ready to book travel, at which point you then transfer out of the bank.

Current Transfer Bonuses

(As of 10/2/2026; these are subject to change/additional bonuses added)

American Express

• Aeromexico Rewards 20% bonus through 11:59PM ET Oct 30, 2026 
• Flying Blue (Air France-KLM): 30% bonus through 11:59PM ET Oct 30, 2026 

Flying Blue is another fairly common transfer bonus among flexible point programs. Flying Blue recently rolled out a new award structure, which ultimately costs you most points for the same thing; but their monthly promo's and 25% off children's fare for ages 2-11 really set them apart for some good redemptions! Learn more about Flying Blue in this post.

We flew Air France from Denver to Paris July 2026 and used a transfer bonus like this! Learn how I booked here. (Unfortunately, as of Oct 2026, Air France is no longer flying a direct Denver-Paris route)

• Hilton: 30% bonus through 11:59PM ET October 14, 2026 

Hilton is a fairly common American Express transfer bonus. Keep in mind, without the transfer bonus, Amex points transfer at a 1:2 ratio to Hilton, which doubles your points moving to Hilton. The transfer bonus makes it take much better!

Also keep in mind, if you have a Platinum card or a Business Platinum Card (or Hilton cards), you get Hilton Gold Status, which gets you 5th night free on consecutive night booking. Doubling this benefit with a transfer bonus, can be a great sweet spot.

Capital One

• British Airways: 20% bonus through 11:59PM ET Oct 31 , 2026 

These airlines are all part of Oneworld Alliance and all use Avios as their points system. What's cool about Avios, is that you can move them from one Avios airline to another! I have an entire post and tutorial here.

Why would you want or need to do this? You can save 30% on other flights, not just these airlines! For example, Qatar Airways is known to be one of the best business class flights in the world but they're not part of this transfer bonus (nor a transfer partner of Amex)... but you could move Amex points to British Airways, and then from British Airways to Qatar to ultimate book your flight and utilize this transfer bonus.       

Chase

• Singapore Airlines: 20% bonus through 11:59PM ET Oct 15 , 2026 

As summer 2026, you need to have miles in your Singapore Krisflyer account in order to search for award flights. You can move 1,000 points (the minimum), to have this ability. The miles have 3 years before they expire.

• Marriott Hotels: 70% transfer bonus September 15th, 2026 through 11:59PM ET October 15th, 2026

Note, just because this is a high number, doesn't mean this is a high value transfer! Do NOT automatically move all of your Chase points over to Marriott. This transfer bonus happens at least once a year (if not twice). Unlike Hyatt, Marriott point pricing is tied to cash price, which often leads to much higher points price per night (especially when compared to Hyatt of similar level hotel). I personally use this transfer bonus to "top off" Marriott points or if I have a one-two night stay to book where Hyatt isn't an option.

 

Citi Bank

• Avianca Lifemiles: 25% bonus through 11:59PM ET October 24h, 2026
• Japan Airlines (JAL): 30% bonus through 11:59PM ET October 24h, 2026

JAL is a new transfer partner to Citi bank as of Sept 2026, transferring 1:1. JAL has some great redemption rates based on how they do their pricing. And, you can use JAL to book Air France and British Airways flights - often for less points AND less surcharges than booking direct!

 

How Many Points to Transfer

To figure out how many points you NEED to transfer, you take the amount of points needs to book your flight/hotel and divide that number by the transfer bonus (in numerical form, the percent plus 1).

So say you want to book a 50,000 point flight and there's a 20% transfer bonus. You would calculate 50,000 / (1.2) to figure out how many points you need to actually transfer. In this case, it calculates out to 41,667 points.

Most programs require you transfer points in 1,000 point increments, which means for our example, with a 20% transfer bonus, you'd transfer 42,000 points to book your 50,000 point travel.

Transfer Bonus Calculator

Instead of having to figure out the math; I've created a calculator that does the work for you!

justcallmehaha’s

Transfer Bonus Calculator

NUMBER OF POINTS REQUIRED TRANSFER BONUS (%) TRANSFER RATIO 1:1 1:2 1:0.75 1:0.5 1:0.6 1:1.6 1:0.8

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Number of Points Needed:
0

Number of Points to Transfer:
0

Number of Points Required: this is how many points you need to book your travel; the points price shown on the airline or hotel’s website where you will book

Transfer Ratio: most commonly this is 1:1. Meaning if you transfer 1,000 bank points to a travel partner, you'll get 1,000 points in the airline or hotel loyalty program.

However, some banks and travel partners don't have a 1:1 ratio. You can find the specific bank to transfer partner ratio when you are in the bank's Transfer to Partners/Transfer Rewards page. For example, for Capital One to Accor hotels, it shows 1,000 Capital One miles is equal to 500 Accor points. So for the Transfer Ration menu in the calculator you would select the "1:.5" option to align.

Summary

Have you taken advantage of transfer bonuses before? While I don't wait for a transfer bonus (when I have something I want to book, I book it!), but it sure is nice when a transfer bonus aligns with something that I need to book.

Save this page to use this calculator whenever you have a transfer bonus you want to utilize. I hope it helps you save some brain cells and some points!

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