Last May, every major transferable currency from Bilt to Capital One temporarily suspended transfers to Emirates Skywards. Although they all came back online, eventually Chase dropped Emirates completely, while Citi, Amex, and Capital One all reduced their transfer ratios.
Later, in December, we received word that Amex would be reducing its transfer ratio to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles from 1:1 to 5:4 starting March 1st of 2026, which left Greg the Frequent Miler wondering, “Is this end of 1:1 transfers?”
Now, we have yet another transfer “pause” from Amex Membership Rewards: ANA Mileage Club:
The message on Amex’ website says that the outage will last until March 2nd and is due to “planned maintenance.” Undoubtedly that’s true, but the question is, is the planned maintenance due to an incoming Amex-to-ANA devaluation?
In Greg’s post from last year, he wondered the following:
What’s next? Amex isn’t the only program that currently offers 1 to 1 transfers to Cathay Pacific. If Cathay Pacific has raised its point prices, we’ll probably see Citi and Capital One reduce their transfer ratios, too. Chase doesn’t partner with Cathay, so nothing will change there. And I expect that Bilt will maintain 1 to 1 transfers as it has done with Emirates. But if the reason behind Amex’s Cathay transfer devaluation is simply that Amex now feels like it’s OK to do this, the other programs will keep their 1 to 1 transfers to Cathay, and we can expect other devaluations from Amex. If so, I bet that ANA will be the next Amex transfer devaluation.
Well, we haven’t seen any other programs devalue Cathay since then.
Amex is the only program that transfers to ANA, so there’s no reason that it has to try and remain competitive with its 1:1 transfers. ANA devalued some its own awards last year, but there still plenty of sweet spots, especially now that one-way bookings are possible with miles. It’s certainly among the most valuable of Amex’s airline transfer partners.
I tend to think that Greg was prescient here, and that 1:1 transfers to ANA will soon be a thing of the past. If Emirates and Asia Miles are anything to go on, Amex won’t move to a reduced transfer ratio immediately, but will give members some advanced notice. However, ANA miles have a hard 36-month expiry (which is part of the reason the whole FM team used a bunch of Greg’s to fly ANA First Class together). Because of that, speculative transfers, once they come back on line, carry significant risk.
Hopefully, all of this is needless fretting, but I have a feeling that ANA will be the next Amex transfer partner to dive below 1:1.
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Asian programs see they can charge more and bank partners are willing to pay (with reduced transfer ratios). It’s just that simple.
Seems unlikely US programs would be willing to “break the buck” directly but will look for cost savings other ways. Rememer, they enter into long term deals with banks to sell their miles.
@Nick Reyes I don’t think ANA will devalue because AMEX has a partnership with it in Japan. For Cathay Citi has a partnership in Hong Kong so I do not think they will be impacted. Emirates broke its partnership with Citi in Dubai so that is why Citi was first. Else Emirates to Citi would have been 1:1 forever.