Category Archives for Credit Cards.
Bilt’s 100% Rent Day transfer bonus was good enough for me to break my usual rule against speculative transfers: I moved 100,000 Bilt points to British Airways with no trip booked. The cap changes the math, I know I’ll use Avios, and I’m earning Bilt points fast enough now that keeping every point flexible no longer makes sense.
Chase Sapphire Reserve now has a record 150,000-point bonus, but the bigger story is that this is still a premium travel card built for actual spending. With strong earning on direct travel and dining, useful protections, valuable transfer partners, and better-than-usual lounge access, the $795 card is not just another coupon book with a big intro offer.
Wells Fargo just added Cathay Pacific Asia Miles as a 1:1 transfer partner, only two weeks after adding its last new partner. The timing is useful: Amex is making Cathay transfers less valuable, while Wells Fargo’s $95 Autograph Journey card is quietly becoming a more serious travel card.
Bilt Rewards just announced Bed Bath & Beyond as a new partner, which mostly made me wonder how Bed Bath & Beyond is still around. It turns out the answer involves Overstock buying the dead retailer’s name, buybuy BABY getting reacquired, Reality TV’s Marcus Lemonis taking over, and one of the strangest corporate reincarnation stories in retail.
The easy part of keeping a business credit card is earning the signup bonus. The real question is whether it still makes sense once the first-year math is over, and for me the AAdvantage Business card still earns enough extra value through AAdvantage Business miles and Loyalty Points to justify the annual fee.
On May 1, Bilt will run a Rent Day transfer bonus to 3 Avios programs: British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia. As usual, the bonus amount is based on your Bilt Rewards status.
American Express just showed that raising the Platinum annual fee does not drive cardmembers away, with retention holding steady even after the refresh and higher pricing. Even more important, existing cardmembers are spending more, net card fees are growing faster than other revenue lines, and Amex is proving that consumers will tolerate a more expensive, credit-heavy card as long as the perks feel rich enough and keep them inside the Amex ecosystem.
Chase Sapphire Reserve is now offering some hotel redemptions at 2.5 cents per point, a meaningful step up from the card’s usual “up to 2 cents” Points Boost ceiling. The best part is that these are not hard-to-find award nights: they are paid rates at premium The Edit hotels, which means cardholders can still get breakfast, upgrades if available, late checkout, and loyalty credit while using points at a higher value.
Katy Perry did not have coins for the Trevi Fountain, so she dipped a credit card in the water instead — and the real question is what card she was carrying in Rome.
Citi premium card looks complicated at first, but the real value is straightforward once you know how the credits post. The Strata Elite’s hotel, Splurge, Blacklane, Priority Pass, and Admirals Club benefits can make the first cardmember year far more lucrative than the $595 fee suggests.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
