Bank Credit Cards & Their Transfer Partners

In a previous blog post, I discussed the essential cards to obtain from each bank. Some feedback suggested that using numerous cards from different banks could lead to multiple transfer fees and make it difficult to consolidate miles into a single account.

Which cards should you have

That is correct. Nevertheless, another reason to distribute your credit card points among various banks is the variation in transfer partners. Nearly all airlines worldwide belong to one of three alliances. These are:

Our beloved Singapore Airlines is part of the Star Alliance, along with well-known carriers like United, Eva, ANA, Thai Airways, and Air China.

Other familiar airlines like Qantas, British Airways, Qatar Airways, and Malaysia Airlines are part of the Oneworld alliance.

SkyTeam members don't really fly to Singapore but KLM, Air France, China Eastern do.

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Why are alliances important for mile redemption? Similar to earning miles on one airline and crediting them to a different member's frequent flyer program, you can also redeem your miles for flights with another member airline within the same alliance.

Here's a quick pictorial view of banks and their airline transfer partners:

The preferential bar on the left indicates superior mile redemption rates from the airlines' frequent flyer program. The blue and red boxes indicate their transfer partners but the red boxes indicate a less favorable bank points-to-mile conversion ratio (for example, OCBC converts points to miles at a 1:1 ratio for KrisFlyer but only at a 1:0.75 ratio for Asia Miles).

*tl:dr*

What factors should you consider then:

• If credit cards from the same bank pool i.e

  • UOB points pool across different cards

  • Citibank points & Citi miles are separate points systems

  • DBS have separate point systems but pooled during redemption

  • OCBC$ and 90N miles are separate points systems

• Which airline frequent flyer program you want to convert your points to

  
  

There are 3 main frequent flyer programs that we can try to utilise:

• KrisFlyer - for SQ redemptions (for all routes)

• Asia Miles - for Cathay, Malaysia Airlines, JAL redemptions (for Asia routes)

• Avios - for Qatar Airways, British Airways, Finnair (for Europe routes)

  
  

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In Summary,

All banks offer KrisFlyer and Asia Miles as airline transfer partners, but my recommendation is to focus your spending on UOB and DBS since their cards consolidate points into a single system. Allocate some spending to Citibank, HSBC, and Amex if you're interested in European routes using Avios, which can be transferred to British Airways or Qatar Airways.