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Help me build a list of Amex Membership Rewards transfer times

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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.

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Comments (55)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Gabbai says:
    21 Jun21 June 06:41

    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:
    21 Jun21 June 07:18

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

    • Rob says:
      21 Jun21 June 11:55

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

  • Jason says:
    21 Jun21 June 07:29

    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:
    21 Jun21 June 08:42

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

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

    • AndyGWP says:
      21 Jun21 June 08:44

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

      • AndyGWP says:
        21 Jun21 June 08:46

        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:
          21 Jun21 June 21:36

          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:
            2 Jul2 July 22:27

            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:
    21 Jun21 June 09:49

    Our gold took 2 full days to baec this week.

  • Jac says:
    21 Jun21 June 09:52

    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:
    21 Jun21 June 10:01

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

  • Dan says:
    21 Jun21 June 10:52

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

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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