Category Archives for Credit Cards.
Last year, Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal launched a U.S. credit card with Cardless. At the time, they had a 60,000 point initial bonus offer, but that dropped down to 30,000 points after the initial push for cardmembers.
Now they’re back with a strong acquisition offer: 58,000 bonus miles That’s an odd number, right?
Bear in mind though that after gutting awards on Delta and devaluing ANA business class awards up to 26% without notice, Virgin Atlantic plans to move to dynamic award pricing in just two weeks. You know it’s bad when the change is about to happen and they won’t give concrete details for what to expect.
Qatar Airways, like many frequent flyer programs, adds cash surcharges when you redeem your miles. Their award travel isn’t free. Still, it can be an incredible deal to redeem 70,000 points to fly arguably the best business class in the world… even with a few hundred bucks out of pocket.
But what if you didn’t have to pay these cash surcharges at all?
Bilt Rewards has added TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go as a 1:1 points transfer partner, and Accor’s ALL – Accor Live Limitless as a 3:2 points transfer partner. Both partnerships are now live.
They say they’re a $105 million company, while Citi is $108 billion and Amex $175 billion, so profit! In the future, they say, they want to add airline and hotel partnerships too as well as a second premium credit card and a small business card aimed at gun manufacturers.
Several months ago Hilton became a Bilt Rewards transfer partner and you shouldn’t care (don’t ever transfer Bilt points to Hilton at 1:1), except that this means from time to time they’ll make really cool offers for Bilt’s monthly Rent Day. And that day has come.
Barclays just isn’t big enough to bid effectively for the whole American AAdvantage card portfolio. Citibank had the chance to take the whole thing, and also to offer points transfers to AAdvantage as part of its ThankYou-brand card product suite. But they balked at the price. Ultimately American got the biggest deal possible by leaving two card issuers in place. That could change.
Everyone knows you’re not supposed to care what your credit card looks like, it’s the rewards that matter! Except that part of being human is that the look and feel of people, places and things matters quite a lot. So it appeals to us in ways we’re not quite comfortable admitting.
The new Rove Card promises transferable points earned at a fast rate, and to make it easier than ever before to redeem award trips.
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 »
