Chase and Amex will temporarily suspend Emirates Skywards point transfers — devaluations next?
Following the news that Citi ThankYou Rewards will be devaluing point transfers to Emirates Skywards by 20% beginning July 27, Chase and American Express have announced that point transfers to the international airline loyalty program will be "temporarily" unavailable.
Keep reading to find out more about the temporary Emirates partner suspension and when point transfers will resume.
Related: Credit card transfer partners: Guide to transferring points and miles to airlines and hotels
Chase and Amex to suspend Emirates Skywards point transfers
As first reported by One Mile at a Time, Chase has issued the following notice to Ultimate Rewards members:
Transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points online or over the phone to Emirates Skywards will be unavailable between [12:00 a.m. EDT on May 29 and tentatively June 30]. We apologize for the inconvenience.
In a similar statement on its transfer partner page, American Express Membership Rewards posted:
Beginning May 28th, the ability to transfer Membership Rewards points to Emirates Skywards miles will be temporarily unavailable. Please visit Emirates.com for more information. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
While Chase offered a tentative resume date for its members, Amex did not offer additional information on when (and if) transfers to Emirates Skywards will commence.
Both card loyalty programs offer 1:1 transfers to Skywards, meaning you can transfer 1,000 points and receive a value of 1,000 Skywards miles in return.
Emirates is also a 1:1 transfer partner of Bilt Rewards and Capital One miles. At this time, members of those reward programs have not been notified about transfer changes to Emirates Skywards.
Will Chase and Amex devalue Emirates point transfers?
Less than one week after Citi announced that ThankYou Rewards points now transfer at a rate of 5:4, meaning for every 1,000 points transferred, you'll receive 800 Skywards miles, both Chase and Amex have issued statements halting transfers to Emirates altogether.
So, is a transfer devaluation imminent?
As I noted in my reaction to Citi's news, while devaluations are never good, what I was more afraid of happening was other credit card companies following suit. Chase and Amex have not publicly announced that they're losing Skywards as a transfer partner or devaluing the transfer rates. However, I wouldn't be surprised if devaluing transfer partners becomes a growing trend.
Members are able to get outsize value for their points and miles thanks to the flexibility they have to transfer those points and miles to loyalty programs. So, are airline and hotel loyalty programs trying to deter this flexibility and coerce more loyalty within a program by devaluing transfers?
Overall, I'm interested to see how this plays out. Let the chess match begin.
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