Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Help me build a list of Amex Membership Rewards transfer times

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

I’d like to enlist your help in a new crowdsourcing operation.

A fairly common question I get asked by email is how long it takes American Express to transfer Membership Rewards points to a specific airline or hotel partner.

I thought it would be useful if I tried to compile a list of approximate transfer times.

This thread will remain open for the usual 2 weeks, at which point I will re-run the article to give it an extra two weeks of life.

If you make a Membership Rewards transfer from the UK scheme within the next month, can you please track how many days it takes and then add a comment to this article?

I am only interested in the airline and hotel partners, plus Eurostar Frequent Traveller and Nectar.

Please ONLY do this if your Membership Rewards account is ALREADY linked to your airline or hotel account.  If you have never transferred to a particular airline or hotel before, the first transaction always takes longer because Amex initially asks the partner to verify your account – which may take anything from 30 seconds to 3-4 days – and only then initiates the transfer process.

To start off, here are partners which I know transfer INSTANTLY as long as your accounts are already linked:

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Delta Air Lines

Emirates Skywards

Thank you in advance for your feedback.  Hopefully we can put together a useful reference resource.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

Amex Platinum Business American Express

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Comments (55)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • Gabbai says:

    I have made two transfers to Flying Blue [KLM/AF] in the past year and they have both been virtually instant. I have also made two transfers to LH. One took seven days and the other three. I think AMEX bulk processes some of the partner redemptions, so it is the luck of the draw which day you set up the transfer.

  • Gabbai says:

    Oops, sorry correction. My LH transfers were Starwood whose transfer times are well known to be very unpredictable.

    • Rob says:

      I did a LH transfer from Starwood 18 months ago that took 4 weeks.

  • Jason says:

    Transfer to etihad on friday 5th June, arrived in etihad account on mon 8th June. Bonus points, for transfers before 6th June also credited.
    Midweek transfers went through the following day to Etihad.

  • AndyGWP says:

    Starwood – not linked, so did link and transfer 14th June @ 2pm.

    Email notifying me of completion came on 16th at 11pm

    • AndyGWP says:

      I know this goes against what you’re asking by the way, but it may end up being useful some how! :/

      • AndyGWP says:

        May be worth adding that they expect your spg number to be 15 digits long, so it will get rejected by the website unless you start it with an appropriate amount of zeros!!

        • Vik says:

          Andy, this was most helpful. Have been trying to link my SPG number through the Amex website for quite some time now and always got an error. Adding zero’s got it to accept. Thanks!

          On similar lines, do you know if something needs to be done for Club Carlson and Eurostar accounts as well?

          • AndyGWP says:

            sorry – not sure if you’ll see this, and not sure of the answer but if you phone AMEX / membership rewards they will be able to tell you 🙂

  • polly says:

    Our gold took 2 full days to baec this week.

  • Jac says:

    I transferred last week MR to top up my Flying Blue account (to take advantage of the Promo awards, ie only 93 K miles Biz class return to Aruba!)
    First (test) transfer (as I wanted to check how quickly points transfer) posted the next day. My card was not linked. The second transfer took 2 days to arrive. So having your cards linked does not necessary speed up the process.

  • Thomas says:

    Nectar happens overnight from the day that one makes the transfer.

  • Dan says:

    I transferred 1000 MR points to Alitalia back in March – took 1 day for them to show up

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.