How to transfer points to an airline: the exact order, step by step

The seven steps, in order

Keep this order next to any transfer bonus you are considering. A bonus improves the arithmetic in step four; it never replaces steps one to three, and it is never a reason to start at step six.

Each step guards against one specific failure, and it helps to know which. Skip the search inside the program and you are trusting a seat you have only seen elsewhere, which is how phantom award space strands points. Skip carrying the booking to the payment page and you never learn whether the seat tickets, or what the taxes and carrier charges are. Skip the cash price and you have no way to say whether the award beats paying, so the transfer is a guess.

Skip reading the transfer screen and the ratio, increment or fee comes as a surprise after the points have left. Skip the account link and name check and the transfer can fail or hang while the seat sits unbooked. Transfer more than the booking needs and the excess is stranded in one program under its rules. Wait after the miles land and the seat can go to someone else, and none of the issuer pages read for this guide offers anything back for a seat lost that way.

What the transfer screens actually ask for

Chase publishes its flow as four moves: log in and enter the Ultimate Rewards portal, open the points transfer section, choose the partner and enter the points, then confirm and book with the partner. Points typically move in increments of 1,000, and Chase says you need a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve or Ink Business Preferred card to transfer to a travel partner. Chase's June 15, 2026 Sapphire Preferred release also names existing Ink Plus and Corporate Flex cardmembers among those whose points transfer to World of Hyatt at 4:3, so read eligibility on your own transfer screen. If you do not yet have an account with the airline, create the loyalty account on the partner's site before transferring, because the points need somewhere to land. Other issuers use the same shape with their own menu names and increments, so learn the order once and then read your own bank's screen for its details.

The name match is the detail that fails quietly. Chase says the name on your Chase account needs to match the name on the partner program account, and that even small differences could cause the transfer to fail. A middle initial on one account and not the other, a shortened first name, a suffix in one place only: fix the mismatch with the loyalty program before you transfer, because after a failed or delayed transfer you are fixing it while an award seat waits for nobody.

Check the door list while you are there. On the day we read it, Chase's how-to page named ten airline programs reachable from Ultimate Rewards: Aer Lingus AerClub, Air Canada Aeroplan, the British Airways Club, Flying Blue from Air France and KLM, Iberia Club, JetBlue TrueBlue, KrisFlyer from Singapore Airlines, Southwest Rapid Rewards, United MileagePlus and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, plus four hotel programs. Partner lists change, so the screen inside your own account outranks this list and every other one, including the transfer ratios explained guide on this site. For KrisFlyer specifically, the KrisFlyer transfer guide covers the account link, the chart and the fees.

Timing: instant, hours, or days

Chase says most of its transfers process by the next business day, and that they may take up to 7 business days. American Express says in its program terms that a transfer typically takes 48 to 72 hours to process, and that some programs delay posting points to the partner account. Across the issuers' own pages the printed range runs from Bilt's 20 minutes to Citi's 14 days. The timing printed on your transfer screen is a planning input, not fine print.

Treat a slow pair as a fact about the booking, the same way you treat the ratio. If the award in front of you is the last seat on your dates and the transfer to that program takes days, the careful options are a different program that can ticket the same flight, a different routing, or paying cash and keeping the points flexible. What does not work is transferring and hoping the space holds; hope is not a step in the order. Windows by bank, including the per-partner estimates on Amex's transfer page and a business-day calendar for Chase, are tabulated in the guide to a transfer that has not posted.

Chase and Amex side by side

The two issuers publish the same order in different words, and the differences are the details that change a plan. Everything in the table was read on the issuers' own pages named in the sources below. Read your own account's transfer screen before acting, because it shows the ratio, the increment and any fee for the exact partner you picked.

Citi, Capital One and Bilt: the same details from their own pages

The other three transferable currencies follow the same order, but each prints a different subset of the rules, and the gaps are worth knowing before a booking depends on them. The table holds only what Capital One's transfer guide, Bilt's transfer partner terms and Bilt's partner article state, read on October 28, 2026.

Bilt goes a step further than the others in its help text. Its partner article recommends confirming flight or hotel availability with the loyalty partner before transferring, and considering a hold on the reservation where the program offers one. It also prints timing: the article says that in most cases transfers are immediate, can take up to 48 hours, and can take up to 72 hours for Southwest, while Bilt's transfer partner terms say most transfers complete within 20 minutes, up to 48 hours. Bilt's minimum depends on status, which no other issuer here does: 2,000 points at Blue, 1,000 at Silver, Gold and Platinum, always in multiples of 1,000.

Citi prints the least. Its Strata Premier additional-information page says the minimum transfer is 1,000 points and names American Airlines, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Cathay, EVA Air, Choice Hotels and The Leading Hotels of the World among the partners, plus others. Timing and finality appear in Citi's Premier Card terms summary, a 2022 document for the card before its Strata rename and the latest Citi transfer terms we could open, rather than on that page: posting "may take as long as 14 days to process", and "a submitted request to transfer points may not be canceled and the points in a submitted request may not be returned to your ThankYou Account." Fourteen days is the longest number printed on any of the five issuers' pages read for this guide, which is one more reason the seat should be found before the request goes in. ThankYou's own transfer terms page did not load when we tried it, so Citi's name rule was not read; check it on your transfer screen, where step four in the order above carries more weight than it does at Bilt.

Capital One's silence on timing has a practical consequence. With no printed window, a slow transfer cannot be judged late or on time from the guide, so plan a Capital One transfer as if it could take a day or more, and use the windows collected in the guide to a transfer that has not posted as the reference when one does not arrive.

The true transfer amount: increments, ratios and fees

The amount on the award is rarely the amount you type. Three things move it. The increment rounds you up: an award priced at 42,500 miles, at 1 to 1 in blocks of 1,000, needs a 43,000 point transfer and leaves 500 miles in the airline program, under that program's rules as the points expiration guide explains. If you already hold a few miles there, subtract them first and transfer only the shortfall, rounded up to the next block.

The ratio scales you. Arithmetic illustration with a stated, hypothetical ratio: if the screen shows 1,000 bank points becoming 800 miles, a 40,000 mile award needs 50,000 bank points. On a $700 fare with $60 in fees, the award looks like (700 - 60) / 40,000 = 1.60 cents per mile, but what you actually spend is bank points, so the honest figure is (700 - 60) / 50,000 = 1.28 cents per bank point. Judge every booking per original point, never per mile on the partner's screen.

The fee adds cash. Amex's terms charge an excise tax offset fee on points transferred to a U.S. airline frequent flyer program, at $0.0006 per point with a $99 ceiling, so a 50,000 point transfer to a U.S. airline adds $30 and a transfer of 165,000 points or more reaches the $99 cap. Subtract that cash from the fare in the formula, exactly as you subtract award taxes. A booking that cleared your target by a hair can miss it once the fee is counted, and the Cash or Points Calculator handles it if you add the fee to the award's cash cost.

If the miles do not land

• Check the loyalty account number you entered against the number shown on the airline's site, character by character.
• Confirm the names on the two accounts match exactly, including initials and suffixes.
• Wait out the timing window your bank stated before calling anyone; a transfer inside its stated window is pending, not lost.
• Keep the transfer confirmation and screenshots of both balances until the award is ticketed and confirmed by email.

Six ways an airline transfer strands a balance

Transferring first and searching second is the classic, and it is how balances get stranded in programs with prices that rose while the miles waited. Even a confirmed booking can strand miles later, because a refund after an airline schedule change returns them to the program, not to the bank. The free search order for award seats puts the search where it belongs, before any points move. The second mistake is the round number: transferring 50,000 points for a 42,000 mile booking strands 8,000 miles in the partner under its expiration rules, where they earn nothing and may never fit another booking cleanly. Transfer the booking amount, in the program's increment, and leave the rest undecided.

The third mistake is transferring for the outbound leg before confirming the return exists, which can lock half a trip into one program while the other half stays unbookable. Price and confirm every leg first, then transfer per booking, using the alliance-by-bank search table to see which programs can show each leg. The fourth is booking from a different program because it looked cheaper in search, without checking whether your bank actually transfers to it; the door list inside your own account is the only list that counts.

The fifth mistake is forgetting the cash that rides along with a transfer. On Amex transfers to U.S. airline programs, the excise tax offset fee is part of the price of the booking, and on a large transfer it reaches $99. The sixth is judging the booking per mile on a partner with a ratio worse than 1 to 1, which flatters every result. Price per original point, add the fee, and if the booking still clears your target, transfer. If you are not sure it does, the when not to transfer guide sets out the cases where keeping the points flexible is the stronger move.

How the same order works at Amex: link first, and the 90 day rule

The seven steps above follow the flow Chase publishes, but the order survives a change of issuer only if you read the second issuer on its own terms. American Express publishes its own transfer tips on its US customer service page, and two of them change how you plan the transfer well before any points move. First, Amex states the linking rule as a precondition: to transfer points, you must link your Rewards Account to a participating partner frequent flyer or hotel loyalty program account. That is step five in the order above, but at Amex it is not something to improvise while an award seat is on the screen. Link the partner on a quiet day, when no booking is waiting, so the link itself is already settled before it has to carry a real transfer.

Amex makes the same name point Chase makes, in its own words: the name on your Card and the name on the selected loyalty program account must be the same for the accounts to be linked and for the transfer to be successful. Amex also states that all points transfers are final and cannot be reversed, and it tells you to check availability and how many points are needed before completing the transfer. None of that is new advice on this page, but hearing it from a second issuer matters. Final means final in both currencies, and that includes the insurance position: what the card guides say about trip delay and cancellation cover on a miles booking is worth comparing before the transfer, not after it. The booking first, transfer last order is not one bank's house style. It is how both programs tell you the product works.

The rule that does change the plan is about whose account the points can land in. Amex says the partner account you transfer into must be held by you or by an Additional Card Member linked to your Rewards Account, and an Additional Card must have been issued to that Additional Card Member at least 90 days prior to linking. Read that as a calendar rule, not a formality. Arithmetic illustration with stated dates, not a booking: an Additional Card issued on November 1, 2026 reaches its 90th day on January 30, 2027, so a first link to that person's airline account cannot be planned before the end of January, however good the award looks in December. If a companion trip is the reason you hold the points, the time to sort out the Additional Card is when the trip is still an idea, not when the award is on the screen.

Amex closes the loop the same way this guide does: check the frequent flyer or hotel account to confirm the points have transferred, then redeem those partner points directly with the airline or hotel for your booking. Once points move, Amex says, they are subject to the terms and conditions of the partner's loyalty program, which is the expiration and change rule described earlier, stated by the issuer itself. Arithmetic illustration with stated inputs, not live inventory: you already hold 6,000 miles in a U.S. airline program, the confirmed award costs 36,000 miles plus $68 in fees that survive, and the same trip costs $614 in cash. You transfer the 30,000 point shortfall at 1 to 1, in 1,000 point increments, which adds the excise tax offset fee: 30,000 times $0.0006 is $18. Value on this booking is ($614 minus $68 minus $18) divided by 36,000, which is 1.47 cents per point. Judge the booking on that full price first, then transfer only the shortfall once the accounts are linked and the names match, and book the moment it lands.

The same order, with hotel ratios, increments and timing, is set out in the hotel transfer guide: find the room first, price the cash rate, read the ratio on today's transfer screen, then move the exact amount and book the moment the points land.

Run this before you press transfer

• Award found inside the airline program and carried to the final booking step.
• Cash fare priced the same day, and the booking clears your target in the calculator.
• Ratio, increment, stated timing and any transfer fee read on today's transfer screen, not from memory.
• Loyalty account created and linked, member number checked, name matching the bank account.
• Exact amount transferred, confirmation saved, award booked as soon as the miles land.