When it was discovered last month that Chase would be losing Korean as a transfer partner, I offhandedly mentioned that the announcement increased the value of Membership Rewards in my mind. A reader challenged me as to why a change at Chase would change my mathematical value of Membership Rewards points. He’s right that there isn’t a direct relationship, but the comment caused me to consider which currency is more valuable to me. Are Membership Rewards more valuable than Ultimate Rewards? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But here are 5 strengths Membership Rewards has over Chase Ultimate Rewards.
1) Membership Rewards has more airline partners
Korean didn’t singlehandedly tip the scales on this, but losing Korean was still a major blow to Ultimate Rewards. There are a number of airlines that are both Chase transfer partners and Amex transfer partners. Some of these can be quite valuable, but they do not give a competitive advantage to Chase since they are shared by both programs. Here are the partners that overlap:
Partners with both Chase and Amex:
Air France / KLM Flying Blue
British Airways Executive Club
Iberia Plus
Aer Lingus AerClub
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
Singapore KrisFlyer
JetBlue TrueBlue
Marriott Rewards
In addition to that list, Chase has two unique airline transfer partners:
Unique to Chase:
Southwest
United
However, Amex has ten* unique transfer partners:
Unique to Amex:
Air Canada Aeroplan
ANA Mileage Club
Cathay Pacific Adia Miles*
Delta SkyMiles
Etihad Guest*
AeroMexico Club Premier
Alitalia MileMiglia
El AL Matmid Frequent Flyer Club
Emirates Skywards
Hawaiian Miles
*Note: Etihad and Cathay are also Citi transfer partners
Right off the bat, Amex has strength in numbers. But beyond just the quantity, those partners have some excellent award chart sweet spots / advantages that make them stand out values. More on that in a minute.
2) Frequent transfer bonuses
While Amex and Chase share a number of common 1:1 airline transfer partners, Amex frequently offers transfer bonuses that make your Membership Rewards points worth more miles. There is currently a 40% transfer bonus to Avios (British Airways / Iberia) and within the last month alone we saw a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic and a short-lived targeted bonus on transfers to Cathay Pacific. If Chase has ever run a point transfer bonus, I don’t remember it.
For this reason, the shared partner list isn’t necessarily equal. Amex frequently offers transfer bonuses to the following airlines:
British Airways / Iberia
Air France / KLM Flying Blue
Virgin Atlantic
This means that Chase is only really on equal footing with Amex on the following shared partners:
Singapore
Marriott
Note that I left out JetBlue. Chase recently added JetBlue as a 1:1 transfer partner and Citi has increased the ratio to 1:1 for premium cardholders effective 9/13/18. Amex is currently running a transfer bonus that brings JetBlue to 1:1. Will they keep the 1:1 ratio long-term? I’m not sure. At the moment, I’d have to give the edge to Chase / Citi, though JetBlue may become a wash.
Transfer bonuses from Amex can really help to exploit award chart sweet spots. For instance, with the 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic, one could book round trip first class to Japan on ANA for about 85K / 93K Membership Rewards points (depending on departure point), whereas the same awards would cost 110K / 120K without the bonus (from Chase or Amex). A difference of 25K points is not insignificant. Under the same bonus, it was possible to transfer 39K Membership Rewards points to land Delta business class to Europe — a savings of 11K points. One or two transfer bonuses maximized could mean getting a lot more mileage out of your points.
3) More credit card options
Chase currently offers 7 cards that earn Ultimate Rewards points (note that there are also some cards that still exist but are no longer available to new applicants). Amex offers 11 Membership Rewards-earning cards that currently offer public welcome bonuses (and 13 cards overall that earn Membership Rewards points). If you were able to get all 7 Chase cards with their associated public welcome bonuses, you would have 315K Ultimate Rewards points (though note this would be challenging as current language would prevent you from earning both Sapphire bonuses within 48 months). If you were to pick up the public welcome bonuses on all of the currently-available Amex Membership Rewards cards, you’d have 410K (targeted offers may bump that up significantly, though note that several flavors of Platinum are included — these points do not come without cost).
The key difference, of course, is that while Chase generally limits you to earning the welcome bonus once every 24 months, Amex limits you to once-per-lifetime unless you receive a targeted offer absent the lifetime language. Here is a list of the currently-offered cards that earn Membership Rewards points (click each card name to learn more about it and see its current offer):
| Card Info Name and Link Only (no offer) |
|---|
4) Better airline sweet spots
Compared to Chase, Amex offers unique partners with better award chart sweet spots. Here are a few Membership Rewards partner sweet spot highlights:
Air Canada Aeroplan:
-55K each way business class to Europe 1
-70K each way first class to Europe 1
-No fuel surcharge options to Europe: Aegean, Avianca, Brussels, Croatia, SAS, Swiss, Singapore, Turkish, United (or low surcharges on LOT)
-Cheap lap infant pricing: $50 or 5K in economy, $75 or 7.5K in business, $125 or 12.5K in first
Etihad Guest:
-“Old” AA award chart (i.e. 50K each way business / 62.5K first to Europe or Asia 1, 25K economy to Japan in off-peak season, etc)
-44K each way business class on Royal Air Maroc
-59K business class on Asia between the west coast and Seoul
-25K business class Prague to Seoul
ANA Mileage Club:
-From 75K round trip in business class on ANA between North American and Japan (90K round trip in high season)
-From 105K round trip business class on ANA to Australia
-88K round trip on partners to Europe
-104K round trip on partners to South Africa
-120K round trip on partners to Australia
-Awesome around-the-world chart
Add to those the strength of a transfer bonus to exploit the sweet spots in Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Flying Blue, or Avios and there is a ton of potential for really outsized value.
5) Round-the-world awards with ANA
ANA is a program that has really caught my attention this year for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its around-the-world pricing on Star Alliance. These are subject to a number of rules (up to 8 stopovers, up to 12 total segments, no backtracking to name a few), but they can provide tremendous value. Here’s a look at the chart.
It is possible to build some pretty amazing values from that chart, particularly in business class. For example, for 115,000 total miles, fly in business class from New York to Tokyo to Seoul to Bangkok to Frankfurt to New York:
Or for 145K, fly from New York to Johannesburg to Istanbul to Delhi to Beijing to New York.
Those examples don’t come close to the maximum number of stopovers or segments – play with routings at GCMap.com to get a feel for distances and you can see some amazing potential compared to buying separate awards. While I love having a variety of points to piece together my trips, it’s just not possible to use any other transferrable currency to get that much mileage out of your points.
Bottom line
Membership Rewards is obviously a well-known program, but I think its strengths are often overlooked. Chase has strengths of its own — Membership Rewards doesn’t have a hotel program to match the value of Hyatt to name one. But if you are looking to fly internationally, especially in premium cabins, Membership Rewards has some strengths that you shouldn’t overlook.
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This post needs an update because Aeroplan is a Chase partner…
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Travel portal. The few times I’ve checked, it takes way more points for the same itinerary. 35k vs 15k on one trip for airline tickets
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I feel the same way. If you look at the big picture, MR points are more valuable now than UR points all things considered.
Etihad 59K business class on Asia between the west coast and Seoul, what is this?
Thanks!
Would love to see either program include Amtrak in their mix.
You can redeem Amtrak gift cards for MR points at 1:1 ratio.
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Membership rewards is a better option, since ultimate rewards require one of the Chase Sapphire product i think for transfer. While earning points potential is much better with Chase Freedom
I used to redeem UR through KE for xxx-yyy flights, since that provided me what I considered best redemption value for xxx-yyy flights. I now prefer to redeem MR through ABC, since it is the next best alternative for those flights. This may make my existing MR balance less valuable due to actual redemptions at a lower value than my prior use of MR. Or this may make my existing MR balance more valuable due to actual redemptions at a higher value than my prior use of MR (e.g., 0.7, 1.25, 1.54), if used for non-premium cabin international redemptions (perhaps “suboptimal”) redemptions as a result of insufficient travel needs compared to point balances. In either case though, if xxx-yyy flights matter to me, losing KE from UR makes MR as a whole more valuable to me due to increased redemption demand vis a vis existing supply previously used otherwise.
For me UR are much more valuable than MR simply because it’s easy to accumulate enough miles for the amount of up front flying that I can reasonably do in a year, so then I have a bunch of extra points and need to figure out what to do with them. With UR you can transfer to Hyatt, or else book hotels through the portal at 1.5 cpp with CSR. It’s hard (impossible?) to get that kind of value from MR without using them for flights. Also, it seems to be a bit more complicated to avoid fuel surcharges with the MR partners.
Yup, MR, using AMEX travel portal, don’t even get 1 cent per points for hotel booking; the value is 0.7 cpp.
https://rewards.americanexpress.com/myca/loyalty/us/catalog/pressvc/pricinghub#/Platinum%20Card&%23174%3B%20from%20American%20Express
Fixed value redemption is not MR strong suit (unless one has the Schwab Platinum that can redeem for 1.25 cents; this is decent).
Good article. I have thankyou points and am looking at borth MU and UR points. I think that Chase is way, way overrated. They have too few partners. And the CSP is 2x travel whereas the citi premier is 3x Travel.
And the fact that you must always pay an annual fee to keep their cards suck. But at least with AMEX they do have credit cards with no AF.
And finally you can get an AMEX at any time. With Chase the rules change: 5/24 rule, 24 month rule to a 48 month rule changes with no notice. No more 5,000 point AU bonus or referral bonuses, where does it end with Chase?
Very Good Post Nick, Drew would be proud.
Chase is better for Hyatt and for SWA fanboys, and for those who MS. That’s it. Amex is better for everything else, and is especially superior for travel to Asia. Amex cards are also much easier to be approved for.
There are MR earning cards that can transfer to airlines with no annual fees. For chase, you have to pay annual fee to get at least the CSP to be able to transfer. That is big since You don’t have to keep paying the annual fee just to be able to have the transfer capability.
Fake news. Complete witch hunt! Deep state working against us. Sad!
Membership Rewards has a charge when converting its points, which Ultimate Rewards does not. It’s a small amount but not totally insignificant.
Only when transferring to US programs. There’s no fee to transfer to ANA, Aeroplan, Virgin, etc.
good to know. I’d only done US airline transfers.
Great article. I only have Chase cards and want to add Amex. I have been studying In recent weeks, trying to decide which one to go for. I can get the Morgan Stanley Platinum card and the hefty annual fee will be waived once I meet their (cumbersome) requirements. Do you think that is the best choice?
There are a few flavors of the AMEX Platinum cards that are slightly different. Comparison can be foudn here https://frequentmiler.com/2017/04/04/which-is-the-best-amex-platinum-card
Article is over a year old but still mostly relevant (there are some minor changes since the posting of article). See which is better for you.
I burn up Hyatt points now as fast as I can earn them so I’m not about to give up all the 5X that Chase gives me. The other infuriating aspect of Membership rewards is how much they lack transparency in their transactions. Trying to trace bonus spend is a grind where it is easy with Chase and Citi. Then they delay the deposit so by the time it happens any positive energy from the spend is long gone. For getting so much right in international redemptions they get so much else wrong it’s hard to get excited about them.
It’s actually easier to accumulate MR points w/ EDP, Amex MR offers and now Rocketmiles.
The white ink on your green tabs do not show up in an email on the iPhone. When you open the internet link they populate.
That is all true, but you did not mention that Chase points are easier to earn (with all that 5x categories on Freedom and Ink), 3x on travel/dining on Reserve, etc. …so an average person has more Chase points than MR and can easier (I would say – much easier even) replenish them…in view of this you have to consider – is it better to pay more points knowing that you can get them easier or less points that are harder to get…
besides, Amx is much tougher on MS and shuts down accounts left and right…
I’ll definitely include the ease of earning in the strengths that UR has over MR.
In short, the Ink Cash is huge (the Ink Plus is no longer available for new applicants) for those who are able to MS (or otherwise spend it in the bonus categories) as are Freedom rotating categories, though both have relatively modest caps.
It’s possible to get similar (or even better) returns on booking travel through Amex Travel. One would have to sacrifice 1x on dining.
I think Chase is stronger from an MS standpoint in many regards, but I’m not sure the separation is as wide as it might seem.
@ Ron…due to the high redemption fees on LH it would seem that Chase UR to UA is a better option…at least IMHO.
ANA round the world award is awesome! How do I book it?
Change stengths to strengths
Comparing the value of points without comparing the ease/difficulty of accumulating/earning points reduces the strength of the argument. It’s far easier to earn more points on the same spend with chase, which makes the total value of your points higher because you have more of them. That’s always been the value of ultimate rewards if you are comparing post card opening bonuses.
Let’s suppose you’re right that it’s far easier to earn points on the same spend (not convinced I agree, but let’s take that premise as a given). I think there is an interesting argument to be had here from two perspectives:
1) Are points you can accumulate faster (and presumably use to book valuable awards) more valuable, or are those which are harder to replace more valuable?
2) To what degree do redemption levels matter? How much faster do I have to accumulate Chase UR points to make up for the greater amount of points it would cost to do a big multi-destination trip as compared to a round the world ticket with ANA or to fly business class to one of Royal Air Maroc’s destinations vs using Etihad miles or a business class ticket to Europe vs using Aeroplan or any use of Avios/Virgin miles vs taking advantage of a transfer bonus?
My point with this post isn’t to prove beyond a doubt that MR points are more valuable – but I do think they are underrated.
I’ve run the numbers, and I, personally, earn more points with my 4 card chase system (CSR, Ink Cash, Ink Unlimited, Freedom) than I do with Amex system (Gold, BBP, Everyday Pref). There was a difference of about 6k points in a year. That difference is probably lower because I only factored in my typical monthly expenses and not any discretionary (fun) spend which I would probably use my Amex BBP or Chase Unlimited card for. With the Amex BBP 2x you can close that gap some considering the Chase Unlimited only has 1.5x,
But…….you make great points showing that with Amex transfer partners and redemption boost offers, that difference may not be enough to really put Chase over the top.
One thing that is nice about Chase, however, is the Chase travel portal. Getting that 50% boost in point redemption with little effort is nice when you cant find a deal you want via transfer partners.
Lufthansa Miles & More transfer also exclusive to Amex
Amex Membership Rewards does not transfer to Lufthansa. At least the US version doesn’t (Amex has different transfer partners depending upon which country your Amex cards are based in). Maybe you’re thinking of SPG/Marriott which does transfer to Lufthansa?