When do points expire? The clock on each transferable currency

Five bank currencies and the event that ends each balance

Read your currency's row, then confirm it inside your own account, because the account terms are the version that governs your balance. Note what the third column says: for four of the five currencies, the thing that ends the balance is an account event, not a date on a calendar. The one row with a clock in it is Bilt.

The real deadline is closure, not the calendar

Because no countdown runs while the account stays open, the dangerous moment is a wallet cleanup: a card you rarely use, an annual fee you no longer want, a balance you forgot was attached to that account. Chase's guidance is the model for handling it. Chase says that if you close the card account before redeeming or transferring, you will no longer have those points, and that if you hold another open Chase card you can switch the points over to it before closing. Amex works the same way in structure: its points stay alive while at least one active Card is enrolled in Membership Rewards, so the last enrolled card is the one that matters. For what each issuer says about closing the account that holds the points, see what happens to points when you close a card.

Good standing is the other condition hiding inside these promises. Chase says points are forfeited if an account is closed for missed payments, program misuse or other reasons detailed in the user agreement, and Amex ties its no-expiry rule to an account in good standing. Capital One's guide to using miles says the same in its own words: miles don't expire as long as the account is open and in good standing, but you could lose unredeemed miles if the account is closed or is no longer active or in good standing, for example if it is suspended, restricted, delinquent or in default. A balance you are counting on for a trip next year is only as safe as the account underneath it. The Chase Ultimate Rewards program page and the Amex Membership Rewards program page cover the rest of each currency's mechanics.

What a late payment does to points

Good standing sounds abstract until a payment is late. The American Express Membership Rewards terms make it concrete: if Amex does not receive a timely payment of the minimum amount due, the points accrued from that card during the period covered by that billing statement will not be earned and will not post. The posting-time guide sets that rule beside the other issuers' posting clocks. The terms add that you can eventually earn those points, but first you must pay the amounts due. That is not an expiration in the calendar sense, but it removes points from a balance just as surely, one statement at a time.

Chase's rule bites harder at the far end. If Chase closes the account for missed payments, the points are forfeited with the account. Taken together, the two rules mean the simplest protection for any points balance is also the most boring: pay at least the minimum, on time, every month, on every card that earns the currency. Autopay for the minimum is a points protection tool as much as a credit one.

Downgrades and product changes: closure without the word closure

Many people avoid closing a card by changing it to a cheaper card from the same issuer. Where the account itself stays open, the rules above suggest the points survive, because the account never closed. Confirm that with the issuer before you change anything, because the details belong to your account, not to a general rule.

The bigger risk is not expiration but lost doors. Chase says transfers to travel partners need a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve or Ink Business Preferred card. Downgrade the only one of those you hold and the points may stay in your account while the transfer option leaves with the card. If a transfer is part of your plan for those points, find the booking and make the transfer before the product change, or keep one eligible card open. Expiry aside, the dated record of 2026 program changes shows why a balance held without a named trip carries its own cost. The same logic applies to any issuer whose best redemption doors depend on the card tier.

Four windows printed in the Amex terms

Amex's no-expiry promise comes with a handful of dated windows, and each starts a countdown the headline rule never mentions. The Membership Rewards terms, last updated November 2026 and rechecked on November 3, 2026, print four of them.

The last row is the one most likely to touch a working household, because it needs no closure at all. Points withheld for a late minimum payment are not gone, but recovering them has a price and a deadline: pay what is due, request the points, and pay $35 for each billing period and each Card Account involved, within 12 months. Two card accounts that each paid late on three statements would cost 3 x 2 x $35 = $210 to recover, which is only worth paying if the withheld points would return more than $210 on a booking you will actually make. The other three rows matter at closure, and what happens to points when you close a card quotes the closure clauses in full.

Bilt's 18-month inactivity line, worked to a date

Bilt is the one bank-side currency on this page with a printed clock. Its terms, last updated October 27, 2026 and reread on October 28, 2026, say points do not expire as long as the account is open and active, but that you immediately lose all your points if the account status changes to inactive. The definition is exact: an Inactive Account is a Membership Account for which there has been no activity for 18 months. Activity has four forms in the terms: rent or mortgage payments made through the Membership Account, qualified purchases with the Bilt co-brand credit card where that applies, any redemption made with Bilt Points, or any participation in a promotional sweepstakes offered by Bilt.

Worked with stated inputs: a member whose last rent payment through Bilt posted on March 3, 2026, and who has made no card purchase, redemption or sweepstakes entry since, reaches 18 months of no activity on September 3, 2027. Any one of the four activity types before that date restarts the count. A household that pays rent through Bilt every month will never get near the line; the people exposed are those who moved out, stopped paying rent through the app, and left a balance behind. For them, a single small redemption is enough to reset the count, and it costs nothing beyond the points redeemed.

The same terms say lost points will not be reinstated unless Bilt determines an error was made, so the 18 months is a hard edge rather than a warning period. The Bilt Points program page covers what the currency can reach once it is safe.

Citi: what the public card page states, and where to look for the rest

Citi's public statement on expiration is narrow. The additional-information page for the Citi Strata Premier card lists, among the card's benefits, no limit to the amount of points earned and no expiration on points earned. That sentence covers points earned on that card. It is not a rule for every Citi card, and this guide does not stretch it into one.

For a ThankYou balance earned on any other Citi card, the reliable source is your own account. Sign in to your Citi or ThankYou account, read whatever expiration details it shows for your balance, and do that before closing or changing any Citi card. If the account shows nothing about expiration, ask Citi directly before a closure rather than assuming the Strata Premier line applies. The Citi ThankYou program page on this site covers the currency's transfer partners and other mechanics.

After you transfer, a different clock runs

Nothing above follows your points through the transfer door. Once points land in an airline or hotel program, that program's expiration and activity rules govern them, and partner clocks vary far more than bank clocks do. The American Express Membership Rewards terms add that points you have transferred to a partner program cannot be converted back into Membership Rewards points. Some airline miles never expire at all: United announced on August 28, 2019 that, effective immediately, MileagePlus award miles never expire. Other programs run inactivity clocks that can erase a balance you stop touching.

This is why a transfer can shorten your horizon even when your bank currency had none. Points sitting in Chase or Amex have no date attached. The same points moved into a partner for a trip that is still a year away start living under that partner's rules on the day they land. Before transferring for a distant trip, read the partner's expiration rule with the same care you gave the ratio, and weigh it in the decision like any other cost of the booking.

Each airline and hotel program sets its own inactivity rule, and those rules are collected program by program in when airline and hotel points expire, with worked forfeiture dates. The wider set of transfer guides sits on the transfers hub.

A speculative transfer into a 24-month program, priced

Three real partner programs run the clock this section prices. American says AAdvantage miles stay alive with earning or redeeming activity at least once every 24 months. Marriott's program terms forfeit all accumulated points after 24 consecutive months without qualifying activity. Hilton's terms put members with no eligible activity in any 24 consecutive month period at risk of forfeiting all accumulated points. Suppose you transfer 40,000 points from a bank currency into one of those programs for a trip you have not booked, and the trip falls through. In the bank currency, those 40,000 points had no date on them. In the partner, they now have a deadline that moves only with activity that program counts.

Price the risk the same way you price a booking. Say your realistic next use for those points, had they stayed in the bank currency, was a booking returning 1.40 cents per point: 40,000 points times 1.40 cents is $560 of travel. If the partner balance lapses, the loss is that $560, not the face value of anything on a chart. If it survives but the program has no route or hotel you want, the loss is the gap between $560 and whatever the partner balance eventually buys. Either way, the transfer converted a dateless asset into a dated one, with nothing booked to show for it. That is the cost of transferring before the booking, and it is why this site puts the booking first every time, in the order set out in how to transfer points to an airline.

If a partner balance already exists, the defence is small and regular activity, on whatever terms the partner counts as activity, plus a note of the last activity date. Do not buy, transfer or spend more than you need just to keep a balance alive; a small earn usually does the job where the partner counts it. When the balance is simply too small for the award you want, the small balance guide compares waiting, closing the gap and spending the points outside travel.

One household, four balances: the clocks on one calendar

The rules on this page are easiest to apply when every balance gets a line on one calendar. Take a household, as an arithmetic illustration with stated inputs, holding four balances on October 28, 2026: Membership Rewards points on two linked Amex cards; Ultimate Rewards points on a single Chase card the household plans to downgrade; Bilt points whose last rent payment through Bilt posted on March 3, 2026, with no activity since; and a Marriott Bonvoy balance, fed by an earlier transfer, whose last qualifying activity was February 10, 2025.

The Amex line has no date. With two linked cards, closing one leaves the other holding the balance, and the only dated risk is the late-payment window in the table above. The Chase line has an event instead of a date: the downgrade. The points may stay, but if the card being downgraded is the household's only Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve or Ink Business Preferred, the transfer door goes with it, so any planned transfer belongs before the product change. The Bilt line has a hard date, September 3, 2027, 18 months after the last rent payment, 310 days from the illustration's start, and any one of the four activity types before then resets it. The Marriott line is the urgent one: 24 months from February 10, 2025 is February 10, 2027, 105 days away. It runs under Marriott's rules, not a bank's, and the airline and hotel expiry guide lists what Marriott counts as activity and why cancelling an old Marriott award after the expiration date can cost the points it returns.

Ranked by date, the to-do list writes itself: counted activity in the Marriott account before February 10, 2027; any Chase transfer for a found booking before the downgrade; one Bilt activity before September 3, 2027; and on the Amex side, nothing but on-time minimum payments. None of the four steps needs a speculative transfer, and a transfer made in a hurry to rescue a balance would only start another partner clock.

Before you close any card: the order that keeps the points

• Check the balance and any expiration details inside the account, and write the figure down.
• Move or combine the points into another open account in the same currency first, where the issuer allows it, and confirm they arrived. Chase describes exactly this move between open Chase cards.
• If no second account exists, find a bookable award and transfer only for that booking, or redeem the balance inside the program before closing. Remember that transfers to partners are final.
• Screenshot the balance and any transfer confirmation, because a closed account can end your online access to the old balance history.
• Close the card last, after the points are visibly safe somewhere else. If you are weighing whether to hold instead, when not to transfer covers that decision.

Five ways bank balances still vanish

The first is panic. A rumour that points are about to expire pushes people into speculative transfers, which move a dateless bank balance into a partner program with a real clock, and the move cannot be undone. If your account is open and in good standing, the table above says you almost certainly have time to find a booking first.

The second is stretching one public statement across several cards. Citi's no-expiration line is printed for the Citi Strata Premier card, so a household with a different Citi card should read its own account rather than borrow that line. The third is forgetting the partner balance after a transfer: miles that landed for one trip and were never spent now live under the partner's rules, and nobody sends a warning you are guaranteed to see.

The fourth is treating a late payment as a credit problem only. Under the Amex terms, a late minimum payment stops that statement's points from posting until the amounts due are paid, and at Chase a closure for missed payments forfeits the whole balance. The fifth is the Bilt balance left behind after a move: 18 months with no rent payment, card purchase, redemption or sweepstakes entry turns the account inactive and takes every point with it. If you are deciding what to do with a balance before a card change, the Cash or Points Calculator prices any booking you find first.

Checklist

• Read the expiration row for your currency above, then confirm the rule inside your own account.
• Pay at least the minimum on time every month, because good standing is a condition of every no-expiry promise.
• If an Amex statement's points were withheld for a late payment, decide within 12 months whether recovering them is worth $35 per billing period and Card Account.
• Before closing or downgrading any card, move, transfer for a found booking, or redeem its balance first.
• If you hold Citi points from any card other than the Citi Strata Premier, read the expiration details shown inside your own Citi or ThankYou account before acting on a general rule.
• If you hold Bilt points, note the date of your last rent payment, card purchase, redemption or sweepstakes entry, and add 18 months.
• Before transferring for a distant trip, read the partner program's expiration rule, because a new clock starts at transfer.
• Keep a note of every partner balance you transfer into, with its last activity date.