Quick Points: Why you should register for loyalty programs before planning your points transfers

Here at TPG, we love our transferable credit card points. You can use them to book award travel with various airline and hotel partners, even if you're not loyal to said airlines and hotels. For instance, I once transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt and redeemed them for a weeklong stay in Hawaii — even though I'd never set foot in a Hyatt.

You might be planning to transfer credit card points once you've earned a lucrative welcome bonus, or if a great redemption option comes up, you could find yourself transferring points unexpectedly. In this case, you will want to be able to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible, so it's worth doing a little bit of setup now to save yourself time later.

Your point transfers could be slowed down if your partner loyalty account is relatively new, which can affect your redemptions. Here's why we recommend setting up loyalty accounts as soon as possible, even if you don't have any transfers planned.

Related: How (and why) you should earn transferable credit card points

Why transfer times matter

Even the most well-planned redemption can fall through if award availability gets snapped up while you're waiting for your points to appear in your airline or hotel account. Transfer times range from a few seconds to several days, depending on the type of credit card rewards and the transfer partner. See our guides to transfer times for Amex Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards and Wells Fargo Rewards.

However, these times can be longer if you recently opened your partner account. The longer you have to wait for the transfer, the more likely award space will disappear before your points make the journey.

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TPG's Andrea Rotondo experienced this when she transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points to her Air Canada Aeroplan account — which she had opened five days earlier — for a business-class redemption on Swiss Airlines. Although Chase points typically transfer to Aeroplan instantly, Andrea's points took around 36 hours to reach her Aeroplan account. Thankfully, the seats she was trying to book were still available when the transfer was finally completed. If they hadn't been, she would have been stuck with no tickets and thousands of Aeroplan points that she may or may not be able to use.

Related: Your guide to Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partners

Why you should register for loyalty accounts now

You can minimize your transfer times (and save yourself a step in the transfer process) by setting up loyalty accounts in advance. If your hotel or airline partner loyalty account is already established before you link your accounts and initiate a transfer, you can expect transfer times to be on par with our guides, and there won't be any added stress or complexity when you are ready to book that dream redemption.

This has the added benefit of helping you search for award availability, since some airlines and hotels make it harder or even impossible to search award rates if you're not logged into an account.

Bottom line

We recommend joining the loyalty programs of all the major U.S. carriers (or the most prominent airlines in your location) and hotel chains now. It's free to sign up, it can help you search for award availability and it will ensure your points transfer as quickly as possible when you're ready to redeem them.

Just keep track of your login info to avoid getting locked out of any loyalty accounts.