British Airways transfers from Amex Membership Rewards are now instant

American Express has quietly rolled out an improvement to Membership Rewards transfers to The British Airways Club.

Transfers are now instantaneous.

As long as your Membership Rewards and British Airways Club accounts are already linked, the points will jump across immediately. If they are not linked, security checks may add a short delay.

Historically, transfers to The British Airways Club were advertised as taking three days.

As per our article earlier this month on Membership Rewards transfer times, in the vast majority of cases they actually completed overnight.

Instantaneous is still better than overnight, of course!

This change could be a response to Qatar Airways Privilege Club offering instant Avios transfers via Membership Rewards.

I suspect that if you transferred Avios from Membership Rewards to Qatar Airways and then on to British Airways, British Airways was losing money.

If we assume Amex pays 1p per Avios, it would have been paying 1p to Qatar Airways who were probably paying British Airways around 0.8p when you moved your Avios across. This way, BA gets the full 1p!

Thanks to Mark for this.