Welcome to 2025. Here’s what’s going to happen in miles, points, and credit cards this year

Whether in blog comments, emails, our Facebook group, or our monthly Ask Us Anything (this month’s edition is pushed out to next week because of the holiday today), readers often ask us what we think will happen. For many years, we’ve given our educated guesses — both in response to individual questions like those and also by making a series of bigger-picture annual predictions about what we think might be coming in the world of miles, points, and credit cards.

I think it is fairly well-established that Frequent Miler does a pretty good job of dissecting and analyzing loyalty programs and credit cards, including both existing programs as they are and as they change. Unfortunately, thanks to old posts existing in perpetuity, it is equally well-established that we are far better at analyzing and dissecting those things that have happened than we are at guessing what will happen.

However, never willing to settle and rest on our laurels, we nonetheless soldier on with annual predictions that mostly don’t come true (sometimes with almost comical speed). To that end, I present you with Frequent Miler’s 2025 predictions, broken down by team member.

Nick Predicts….

American will go off the charts

I hate to jinx us, so I’m not going to predict a devaluation. And I really don’t want to predict that American will jettison what remains to be a very strong partner award chart. However, I’m not optimistic. With the winds of change blowing award chart-less awards to so many other programs, I feel like 2025 is the year that American will leave its partner award chart behind. I very sincerely hope that I’m wrong, but I predict that American’s partner awards will no longer be subject to an award chart at some point in 2025 and that awards will likely be dynamically-priced when that happens.

We’ll see a cruise match that takes us to uncharted waters

I’ve written extensively about “free” (or very deeply discounted) cruise opportunities over the past couple of years. Many of those have run ashore over the past few months, but I’ll predict that something new will come along in 2025 on the cruise match front that will create an opportunity to cruise “for free” on a new line or on an itinerary that is in some way different than the ones we’ve seen so far. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I’m willing to bet that the community will drum up something new in 2025.

Flying Blue will make stopovers bookable online

Flying Blue added stopovers on award tickets a couple of years ago. That sounds great in theory, but knowing when one should be available and what it would cost has been an enigma for all but the most advanced award bookers given the loose handle most of us have on the stopover rules. But Air France KLM Flying Blue has shown an almost Aeroplan-like desire to make its frequent flyer program interesting and appealing to savvy US-based consumers. I’ll bet that 2025 is the year that we see Flying Blue bring this functionality online, making the program even more appealing to those of us who will learn how to use them.

Barclays will bring back a transferable points card

While Hyatt may be the biggest loser of 2024 in the way that Hilton ate their lunch on the SLH takeaway/integration, Barclays gets a seat at the biggest loser of 2024 table given that we’ve found out that Barclays is losing the Hawaiian cards and the American Airlines Aviator cards. In a call with investors, Barclays mentioned pivoting away from airline cards. Unless they intend to pivot away from mainstream rewards cards entirely, I have to imagine that they need to launch a new transferable points card in 2025. They’ve got the infrastructure in place — to my knowledge, they’ve continued to service the Arrival Premier card (which features transfer partners). Whether they call it an Arrival card or they create something else entirely, Barclays has to do something, if for nothing else than to have a chance at keeping some slice of the customers they stand to lose.

Wells Fargo will add a bunch of transfer partners

Wells Fargo was surprisingly quiet in 2024. After launching its Autograph Journey card in April 2024 with a limited set of transfer partners, many of us expected that we’d see Wells Fargo quickly add transfer partners to the mix. In fact, I might have thought that part of the reason for their partnership with Bilt could have been to gather insights with an eye toward a robust home-grown program. However, despite having a couple of cards with strong earning potential, their stable of transfer partners remains surprisingly small. I predict that 2025 has to be a breakout year for Wells Fargo adding at least 4 more transfer partners or else they run the risk of being like that Barclays card that you forgot existed until you read the previous paragraph.

Bonus prediction (not for any points): Frequent Miler will be better than ever

I’m not looking to earn any points (or bonus points) with this prediction, but I’m going to go on record and say that 2025 will be the best year ever for Frequent Miler. I don’t mean “best” in terms of measurable, numerical values, but rather “best” in terms of making the site, content, and each of our major channels better. With Carrie joining Greg, Tim, and I full-time and Stephen doubling his hours, I feel really good about what we’ll be able to do in 2025. That’s not to say that we’ll have a flawless year, but rather just to say that I feel really good about the team we have in place and the expanded time we’ll have to get us where we’re going. Here’s to a great new year!

Tim foretells…..

Citi will go “Strataspheric” with a new premium card

I’ve been predicting that Citi would launch a new premium card for three years and I don’t see any reason to stop now. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Citi is still the all-time Elvis, or king if you will, of premium credit cards because of the original Citi Prestige. That card’s benefits were insanity…as in, how did gainfully employed and supposedly sane people meet together and decide to let it fly. It had a $250 airline credit good for airfare as well as incidentals, a 4^th night free benefit that was on any hotel booking when you used a Citi Concierge, Admiral’s Club access regardless of whether or not you were flying American, the ability to redeem ThankYou points at 1.6cpp towards AA flights (for flights still earned AAdvantage miles), three complimentary rounds of golf/year…it was a points and miles junky’s fever dream. Alas, it turned out that the answer to “what crazy thing did Citi do” was to design the original Prestige card in the first place and benefits were slowly stripped away. Evidently, Citi lost their shorts on the card (can’t imagine why) and have been hesitant to jump back into the blingy deep end with Chase, Amex and Capital One ever since.

But that’s finally going to change this year. Citi has a trademark on the Strata Elite card, is supposedly investing in Strata-branded airport lounges and is spending a cool billion dollars to wrest AA away from Barclays. You’re telling me it’s doing all that just to get people to sign up for AA cards and the $95 Strata Premier? Citi ain’t that crazy.

Citi will announce that AA is becoming a transfer partner

Speaking of the Citi/AA/Barclays menage a trois, that’s finally ending in 2026 after Citi gave AA a billion reasons why there was an AAdvantage to exclusivity. I can’t image that all that effort was just to be able to get their hot little hands on the rights to the Aviator Red card. This is the year that Citi gets serious about competing with the big boys for the loyalties of the credit card abusing using public (see above) that’s willing to spend $500+ per year on a card that makes them feel special.

Let me be clear, I’m NOT predicting that you’ll be able to transfer your ThankYou points to AA in 2025. The exclusive relationship doesn’t start until 2026 and I don’t think that Citi will transfer to AA until that happens. However, I DO think that we’ll know for certain it will be happening by the end of 2025…and don’t look now, but when it does, ThankYou points may become the single most valuable transferable currency.

AA will finally devalue its partner awards

There’s three certainties in life: death, taxes and the eventual devaluation of AA’s partner award chart. Pretty much every person with a keyboard and a passing interest in points and miles has been predicting it for years.

American long ago went full-tilt dynamic with award flights on its own metal – some of them can reach almost Delta-ish prices. Curiously, they’ve not tinkered with their partner award chart, however, where there is still fixed pricing as long as the partner has released saver award space. As a result, there are still quite a few sweet spots that can be had with partners, something we saw emphasized during the recent “Million Mile Madness” challenge when both Nick and Greg made good use of a couple of them.

The music’s going to stop in 2025, however. American will use the move to Citi as the perfect opportunity to “continue to explore how to create value for its customers,” primarily by 86ing its excellent partner award chart.

Hilton will raise the 150K cap on standard awards

For the first time in ages, Hilton Honors was one of the most exciting programs around in 2024. That’s almost exclusively due to it wooing the affections of Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) from Hyatt.

There are now over 400 participating SLH hotels that can be booked through Hilton Honors and many of them are are drool-worthy destinations which would be out of reach for most people when booking with cash. Better yet, almost all are offering standard free night awards that can be booked with points or free night certificates AND there are handsome elite benefits on offer when you do.

Like Hilton’s own hotels, SLH properties max out at 150,000 points per night, but many of them have cash rates that go well over $1,000 per night, a great proposition for Hilton points that we value at just under half a cent each in normal use cases. Hilton has already increased the award costs of many high-end SLH properties that it added earlier this year, as well as its own. I think it’s only a matter of time before they lift the 150K ceiling as well.

Greg guesses….

In 2024, my prediction success rate was awful. Sure, maybe I’m bad at predicting these things, but I don’t think so. I think that the powers-that-be purposely made my predictions wrong. They took a look at my 2024 predictions and said to themselves, “well, we’ll have to put this off until he stops predicting it.” For example, Amex was surely about to refresh the Business Green card until they saw that I predicted it. And Chase was certainly set to make the Ink Premier into a real Ink Card until they saw my prediction. And Choice delayed the ending of their 100 day award booking window until 2025 just to spite me. How do I know all this? Via the same great psychic powers that led to my 2024 predictions in the first place.

Now that I understand the game, my goal for 2025 isn’t to predict things correctly. Instead, I’ll predict the opposite of what I want to happen to ensure those things happen.

Here goes…

Chase won’t make Ink Premier a real Ink card

In 2022, Chase introduced a new Ink Business card: Ink Business Premier.  At first glance, the card is fantastic. It earns 2 Ultimate Rewards points for all spend, and 2.5 points per dollar for purchases of $5,000 or more. But there’s one huge problem. Unlike the Ink Business Preferred card, Ink Premier points can’t be transferred to airline and hotel partners or used for extra value towards travel. And unlike the Ink Business Cash and Ink Business Unlimited cards, Ink Premier points can’t be moved to other cards to make the points more valuable.

My prediction for 2025 is that this will stay unchanged. There won’t be a Pinocchio-like ending for this card — at least, not in 2025.

American Airlines will devalue partner awards

American Airlines has a terrific award chart, specifically for partner awards. That award chart has been unchanged for many years now and it offers incredible value in many circumstances (see, for example: My AAdvantage love affair continues). In 2025, AA will do something to devalue these partner awards. Maybe they’ll change the award chart. Maybe they’ll eliminate the award chart. Maybe they’ll increase fees. We’ll see.

Citi won’t add American Airlines as a transfer partner

As we reported separately, Citibank is set to become the exclusive provider of American Airlines credit cards. That’s mostly sad because it means we lose Barclays as another source for AA welcome bonuses. But the good news would be if the Citi ThankYou Rewards program gains AA as a one to one transfer partner. That may happen in 2026 or beyond, but I’m predicting that it won’t happen in 2025.

Delta won’t change their elite criteria for earning 2026 status

In 2023 (if I remember correctly), Delta massively increased requirements for earning elite status in 2024 and beyond. But after a public outcry, they rolled back the requirements to make elite status, for many, easier than ever to obtain. But they also made it clear that they still intended to go to those higher elite requirements eventually, and everyone thought we only had a one year grace period. Now, as I write this, though, we haven’t heard a peep from Delta about changes to the requirements for earning 2026 elite status (In 2025 we work towards earning 2026 status, so it’s surprising we haven’t heard anything yet!). However, since the 2024 elite year ends January 31 2025, Delta still has a month to make changes.

My prediction is that they won’t make any changes right now. In other words, the requirements for earning elite status in 2025 for the 2026 elite year will be the same as they were in 2024 for the 2025 elite year.

Oops… I just remembered that I was supposed to predict things that I don’t want to happen. Here I did the opposite! Crossing my fingers that Delta doesn’t read this!

Stephen foresees….

Bilt will make a major credit card change

Bilt’s relationship with Wells Fargo made news this past year due to a newspaper article which made it sound like Wells Fargo was unhappy with how things have been working out, with Bilt’s founder Ankur Jain then sending an email to Bilt Rewards members in December suggesting that changes are coming on the Bilt Mastercard.

It might therefore seem like a bit of a cheat to guess that changes are coming on the Bilt card, but my prediction is that rather than being a handful of minor, incremental changes, there’ll be at least one major change. Perhaps it’ll be an announcement that Bilt will be moving on from Wells Fargo (having already moved on from Evolve Bank a couple of years ago), or perhaps the card will make some major changes to its bonused spend categories. No matter what the reason, I’ve a feeling the Bilt/Wells Fargo drama is only going to continue to Bilt build.

Wells Fargo will add at least two new transfer partners

Wells Fargo launched its Autograph Journey card in 2024 with a mild pop rather than a bang or a whimper. It’s a card that has potential seeing as its bonused spend categories all allow for unlimited spending and it earns points in a transferable currency. The list of transfer partners at the card’s launch were underwhelming though, consisting of Air France/KLM Flying Blue, British Airways Avios, Aer Lingus Avios, Iberia Avios, Avianca LifeMiles and Choice Privileges.

Wells Fargo had insinuated that they were just getting started, so the expectation has been that they’ll add more transfer partners at some point. I’d be surprised if they were content with that lineup of partners, so I’m predicting they’ll add at least two more transfer partners in 2025. Having said that, I’m not expecting to get overly excited by any new additions as I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up being promiscuous partners like Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines. Still, more is better than fewer.

Another airline will make it easier to earn status through non-flight activity

This prediction is a little annoying as it’s already come true to an extent since I initially made it. I set a calendar reminder for myself with this prediction several months ago to remind me to include it in my predictions for 2025. Since then, Alaska Airlines has announced different ways that Mileage Plan members can earn towards status via non-flight means, while also announcing a premium credit card that will also provide that ability.

Nonetheless, I’m going to maintain this even if Alaska spoiled things for me somewhat – it’ll just have to be a different airline that makes it easier to earn status through other methods like credit card spend. Considering how airlines often make announcements for changes that’ll be coming the following year, I’d like to caveat this prediction with the proviso that I’d expect an airline to announce changes in 2025 that’ll take effect in 2026, rather than them necessarily bringing in the changes in 2025.

A new travel business card will be launched

For me, the most likely contender would be Chase and Air Canada to launch an Aeroplan business card. Perhaps it’ll be a more niche card though like an Expedia OneKey business card or a business card for Choice or Best Western.

Hyatt will provide the ability to transfer points online

IHG, Hilton and Marriott all let you transfer points to another member for free online in one way or another. Hyatt also lets you transfer points for free to another member, but the process is more convoluted. You have to manually (or digitally) complete a form, then physically mail it or email it to Hyatt. It’ll then take x number of days for them to process the request, but they won’t email you to let you know it’s been done – you just have to check your account intermittently to see if the points have been debited or credited.

Hyatt has made improvements with its IT in the last year or two though, now letting World of Hyatt members quickly and easily transfer free night certificates, suite upgrade awards, Guest of Honor awards, etc. It doesn’t feel like it should be too much of a stretch for them to work out a way to finally let members transfer points online, so fingers crossed that happens in 2025 in order for this prediction to come true.

Carrie forecasts…

The Frequent Miler challenge will feature….

We’ll go back to doing just one annual team challenge and it will feature some countries we haven’t seen in challenges before. For a number of reasons, Asia always gets the lime light for our challenges (largely because of all the great miles and points opportunities for getting there and staying there.) But we are always mindful of our sort of Asia-heavy focus in challenges, and we keep trying to find ways to feature Central/South America and even Africa. To be more specific, I think this year’s challenge will feature some non-Asia and non-Europe destinations.

And the challenge will also feature…

Stephen and Tim will get to do a team challenge at the same time… This is the prediction I’m least confident about since we are trying to make sure someone other than me stays behind to help manage the blog for each challenge. But it’s happened before and I think it could happen again.

Nick will find his sea legs again

Nick won’t be done cruising yet, even though the free-cruise loopholes are closing. I think he’s still got some cruises up his sleeve.

A new country for Greg

Greg will finally make it to Hong Kong, which he’s as of yet still never seen! (He’s gotten close!)

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