American Express Membership Rewards Points Transfer Tutorial

There are 2 types of American Express Membership Rewards points:

• Membership Rewards
• Select Membership Rewards

Membership Rewards come with 4 American Express charge cards:

The advantage of the Membership Rewards that come with these 4 American Express charge cards is that they can be transferred to:

• airline partners
• hotel partners

Select Membership Rewards come with 3 credit cards:

Unlike Membership Rewards, Select Membership Rewards can only be transferred to:

• hotel partners

It is therefore not possible to transfer Select Membership Rewards directly to airline programs such as Aeroplan.

Although the Choice Card from American Express™, the American Express Cobalt™ Card and the American Express Business Edge™ Card have a reduced points transfer capability compared to the other 4 cards, they are still attractive, especially because of their earning rate!

American Express Canada partners with 6 airline loyalty programs. Here are all of them, with their transfer rate and the time it takes for the transfer to occur:

American Express Canada partners with 2 hotel group loyalty programs. Here they are, with their transfer rate and the time it takes for the transfer to occur:

Find out how to transfer Membership Rewards from American Express to other loyalty programs.

First of all, you will need to log in to your American Express online account from a computer (this does not work on the mobile application).

Click on “View and Exchange“.

You will then be taken to the Membership Rewards program page.

If you do not have any other cards on your American Express online account, you can proceed to Step 4.

If you have multiple cards linked to the same American Express online account, make sure the correct Membership Rewards account is selected.

To do so, click on “Set Account” and choose the corresponding account.

To go to the partner loyalty programs page:

• go to the “Travel” tab
• click on “Participating frequent flyer programs“.

On this page, if you have one of these 4 cards, you will first see the airline partners, and then, at the bottom of the page, the hotel partners:

If you have one of these 3 cards, you will only see the hotel partners:

Here, you have two options:

• either you already have an account number with the loyalty program (Aeroplan, Marriott Bonvoy, etc.) = option A
• either you do not have an account and would like American Express to open one for you = option B

This is the option we prefer because you have control over the account opening. You must readily know your loyalty number/password…

You will need to add your existing account number by following the different steps.

We strongly prefer option A: if you let American Express open a loyalty program account for you, you will often have to wait a few days.

If you want to go with this option, here are the steps:

Then, once your account has been added, you will be able to transfer your Membership Rewards in 3 steps:

To transfer your Membership Rewards, you will need to add:

• The amount of Membership Rewards to be transferred
• Security information related to one of your American Express cards (4 digits CID in the front + 3 digits CSC in the back)

A verification screen will display to show you:

• the number of Membership Rewards transferred
• the number of points obtained for the partner loyalty program

Once the transfer is done, you will get a confirmation screen with your new points balance.

To view a list of your Membership Rewards transfers, go to the “Your Points Account” menu and click on “My Rewards”.

You will then see this summary.

This post was not sponsored. The views and opinions expressed in this review are purely my own.