Stop transferring your Amex Membership Rewards points too early!

There is a piece of advice that I really feel like I need to give you, and it's one of the most important things you can do to protect the value of everything you earn. It is this: do not transfer your Amex Membership Rewards points to an airline or hotel programme until you are ready to book something specific.

But because it runs counter to the instinct most people have, which is to "lock in" their points somewhere familiar as soon as possible, it is worth explaining exactly why it matters, what has happened in recent years to make it more important than ever, and what you should be doing instead.

Consider this your big sister sitting you down for a frank conversation before you do something you can't undo.

The trap of the pre-emptive transfer

When you first start accumulating Membership Rewards points, there is a natural temptation to feel that the points are somehow not real until they are sitting inside a programme you recognise. You fly British Airways regularly, so you transfer your balance into Avios. You like the idea of an Emirates first class redemption one day, so you move a chunk into Skywards. It feels decisive. Organised. Like you are making progress towards something.

What you are actually doing is voluntarily surrendering the most valuable thing about Membership Rewards points: their flexibility. And you are doing it in exchange for nothing, because until you have a specific flight or hotel in mind, with availability confirmed, those miles in your airline account are just sitting there doing exactly what they were doing before, except now they are exposed to risks they were not exposed to in Membership Rewards.

I know, it's scary to hear, and you probably feel called out. I am sorry.

Membership Rewards is a neutral savings account. Your points are not at the mercy of changing commercial realities. They just sit there, waiting for you to direct them wherever makes the most sense when the time comes. That optionality is worth protecting with everything you have.

What loyalty programmes actually are

To understand why this matters, it helps to think honestly about what airline and hotel loyalty programmes are designed to do. They are no longer designed to reward you. They are designed to retain you, to give you just enough of a reason to keep booking with the same carrier or staying in the same hotel chain, while keeping the actual cost of redemptions as high as they can manage without losing your interest entirely.

Every point or mile that sits unredeemed in an airline account is, from the airline's perspective, a liability, a promise of future value they will eventually have to honour. Airlines and hotels are therefore structurally incentivised to erode the value of those liabilities over time. They do this through devaluations: quietly increasing the number of points required for popular redemptions, removing saver award availability, adding surcharges and fees, and shifting to dynamic pricing models that make it harder to know what anything actually costs until you are already committed.

This is not cynicism. It is simply what happens, consistently, across almost every major loyalty programme, and it has accelerated significantly over the past several years. The direction of travel for award costs is almost always upward. The sweet spots that existed five years ago are rarely as sweet today, and the ones that exist today will almost certainly be less accessible five years from now.

Knowing this, the question becomes: why would you voluntarily move your flexible, Membership Rewards points into one of these schemes before you absolutely need to?

The British Airways story: a recent and painful lesson

British Airways, and therefore Avios, is one of the most popular destinations for Membership Rewards transfers among UK cardholders, and for good reason. It is a useful currency that can be used to book seats across the oneworld alliance, on dozens of partner airlines. At its best, Avios can deliver extraordinary value, particularly for premium cabin seats on long-haul routes.

But British Airways has now carried out two significant devaluations of its Avios programme in relatively quick succession, and the cardholders who felt the sharpest pain were those who had transferred points speculatively, sitting on a large Avios balance without a specific booking in mind, confidently assuming the value would be there when they needed it.

Devaluation number one increased the number of Avios required for popular routes. The mileage chart that cardholders had mentally mapped out their future travel against was, overnight, no longer the chart that existed. Devaluation number two, which you might argue it's a true point devaluation, was to up the amount of tax and fees paid on points redemption flights.

To be clear: Avios are still worth collecting and transferring, when you have a specific redemption in sight. The programme remains one of the most versatile available to UK travellers and the network of airlines you can book through it is genuinely impressive.

But the idea that you can safely bank Avios for years and assume the value will be waiting for you when you eventually want to use them has been thoroughly tested in recent years, and found wanting.

The one upside is the fact that the Avios can of course be moved between other oneworld airlines, such as Finnair, Qatar, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Loganair where the programmes haven't devalued. Yet.

Etihad: when a partner simply disappears

Devaluation is one risk. The other risk, and in some ways the more brutal one, is that a transfer partner leaves the programme entirely, leaving you holding miles in a scheme you may have no practical use for, nor the ability to add to.

This is not a hypothetical. From 22 June 2026, Etihad Airways was removed as a UK Membership Rewards transfer partner. Anyone who transferred points into Etihad Guest miles in the months or years before that date, in anticipation of future travel on Etihad, has been left in a situation they did not plan for.

Emirates: the double penalty

Emirates Skywards deserves its own mention, not least because the transfer ratio from Membership Rewards to Emirates is already one of the least favourable in the programme. Unlike most partners, where one Membership Rewards point becomes one airline mile, Emirates requires two Membership Rewards points to produce a single Skywards mile. You are already starting from a deficit.

The seats have the same colour pattern as a leisure centre logo from the 90's

Emirates has also devalued its Skywards programme, reducing the mileage value available on a range of redemptions. When you combine a poor transfer ratio with a devalued programme at the destination, the cumulative impact on value is significant. To illustrate this, a cardholder who transferred 50,000 Membership Rewards points into Emirates Skywards received 25,000 miles to begin with, and then saw those 25,000 miles buy less than they once did.

There is still a case for using Skywards miles, particularly for Emirates first class redemptions when availability can be found. As I always say Emirates is an "aspirational" transfer partner, because I personally wouldn't be using them in economy as I think the product, particularly on the 777, is decidedly average. But the bar for it being worth transferring into should be considerably higher than for most other partners, and speculative transfers into Skywards, on the basis that Emirates flies almost everywhere and the miles will come in handy eventually, are particularly difficult to justify.

The golden rule: transfer with a booking in mind

Everything above leads to a single, practical principle that will serve you well for as long as you hold Membership Rewards points: only transfer when you have identified a specific award you want to book, confirmed that the availability exists on the dates you need, and are ready to complete the booking within the next day or two.

This sounds obvious when you say it out loud. In practice, it requires a small but meaningful shift in how you think about your points. Instead of treating the transfer as part of the reward, a satisfying moment of moving your earnings somewhere tangible, you treat it as the final, functional step in a process that begins with finding the right availability and ends with a confirmed booking.

In many cases, British Airways Avios and Virgin Points among them, transfers complete instantly, meaning there is no meaningful risk of the seat disappearing between your transfer and your booking.

For programmes with longer transfer windows, like Singapore KrisFlyer at up to fifteen working days, some advance planning is required. But the principle holds: know what you are booking before you transfer.

A note on points expiry

One legitimate reason to consider transferring sooner is the risk of points expiring, but it is worth understanding when this is and is not actually a concern with Membership Rewards.

Membership Rewards points do not expire as long as you hold at least one active, qualifying American Express Membership Rewards accruing card. They are not on a rolling expiry clock. They are not counted down by inactivity. They simply persist, for as long as your card account is open. This removes the pressure that applies to some airline frequent flyer programmes, where miles can expire after twelve or eighteen months without activity, forcing premature redemptions or speculative transfers just to reset the clock.

If you are thinking of closing your fee-paying Amex card, the solution is not to hurriedly transfer your balance somewhere before you do. The solution is to open the free American Express Rewards Credit Card, which carries no annual fee and keeps your Membership Rewards balance alive indefinitely at no cost. You can then take your time deciding where to send your points, free from any pressure.

The bottom line

Points are a currency, and like any currency, their value is set by forces largely outside your control. What is in your control is how long you keep them in the most stable, flexible form available, and when you choose to exchange them for something less flexible but more specific.

Membership Rewards points, sitting un-transferred in your account, are as close to stable as the loyalty world gets. The moment you move them into an airline programme, you are making a bet on that programme's future generosity. Recent history, Avios devaluations, Etihad removed, Emirates reduced transfer rate, suggests that bet carries real risk, and that the cost of patience is low while the cost of impatience can be substantial.

Do not transfer speculatively, or because it feels tidy. Also, please don't transfer because you vaguely think you might fly with someone at some point. As much as I want to fly Singapore Suites there is just no point in me transferring over our points for something that may not happen for another two years! Transfer when you have a seat, a date, a programme, and a plan.

Helena

Points Well Made is a passion project from Sam and Helena. If you've enjoyed this and want to help us keep the lights on, please consider buying us a Ko-fi or subscribing monthly. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for more of the same. Thanks for reading.