Credit Card Transfer Bonuses for September 2026 (Plus Our Famous Alerts)

Two salient notes: 1) This bonus is sponsored by Turkish, not Citi, and has a maximum of 50,000 Bonus Miles. 2) The terms state the bonus miles won’t appear until after the promotion ends which is the end of August. So while it’s true that a saver award from the US to Turkey on Turkish metal would only be around 47,000 Citi ThankYou points for 65,000 Turkish, it doesn’t quite work that way unless you can wait until early September to book and acknowledge there might not be any inventory. (Note that alert service Thrifty Traveler did flag a ton of 65,000 mile saver inventory just 3 days ago.)

One strategy could be to wait until Aug 31 to transfer (make sure you are subscribed to our free alerts that can be set to notify you two days before the offer ends).

Remember that Turkish miles “hard expire” after 3 years, so speculative transfers are strongly not advised. And they have devalued hard in the last couple of years. Where you used to be able to fly business class to Hawaii for 7,500 miles, the domestic chart now looks like this:

Contiguous US & Alaska Domestic Awards

• Economy Class: 15,000 miles
• Business Class: 22,500 miles

Hawaii Domestic Awards (From US Mainland)

• Economy Class: 25,000 miles
• Business Class: 40,000 miles

IMPORTANT NOTES: 

• Your AsiaMiles account must be in the United States and you must register first (link above)
• MAXIMUM BONUS = 10,000 miles: Eligible members will receive bonus miles equal to 10% of the Regular Miles earned from Eligible Transactions completed with Eligible Partners during the Promotional Period, up to a maximum of 10,000 bonus miles per eligible member. The maximum bonus applies across all participating partners combined.
• Bonus miles will be credited to the eligible member’s Cathay Membership Programme account within approximately 12 weeks after the applicable Regular Miles have first been credited, verified, and processed by the relevant Eligible Partner.
• While Cathay is great for booking its own premium seats (as well as JAL and other oneworld), note they just increased fuel surcharges. Price your award out before booking.

As for the bonus itself, we just saw a 25% transfer bonus to Flying Blue from Amex last month and transfer bonuses are not infrequent. The biggest reason to consider to not transfer, though, might be the rumor about Japan Airlines becoming a Citi transfer partner. It’s completely a rumor for now, but if you log into your ThankYou account and go to your profile, the option to link your JAL Mileage Bank account is there, and why would it be there if it wasn’t a partnership in progress?

JAL is a fantastic program and would be huge win for Citi to add to ThankYou, although since becoming transfer partners with Bilt, Rove, and Capital One (they used to not partner with anyone by Marriott Bonvoy for transfers), we have seen availability dry up just a bit. I’m sure JAL will struggle a bit to toe the line between selling their miles and preserving award space availability. (It’s a difficult balance!) Still, if JAL does become a transfer partner, you may be inclined to save your ThankYou points vs. speculatively transfer for 20% bonus miles.

As for this bonus itself?

Flying Blue has some really good award rates at times, though they often fluctuate into the absurd. 60,000 points for Business class to/from Europe from the US is solid, but the surcharges have gotten way out of control (about $600 one way). Sometimes, the pricing is waaaaay over 60,000 points with the same surcharges, so we’d like to see them get this under control and it does make a speculative transfer harder to justify unless you have consistent personal success. With Tiffany Funk (former One Mile at a Time / Point.me) running the Flying Blue loyalty program since June, things are likely to improve. Those things definitely take some time to come to fruition.

Also, while Flying Blue miles expire, it’s a reasonable 24 months and any activity (such as a simple 1,000 point transfer in) will extend it. They used to have archaic rules where flight activity miles weren’t extended with other activity but they came to their senses a few months ago and it’s now simplified with all miles in one pool and all extended by any activity.

Remember that Qatar Avios has become competitive and inline with other Avois partners. It’s always worth checking whether one or another Avios partner (i.e. British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, or Aer Lingus) has a better redemption price since you can freely move between them. You can even connect your British Airways account directly inside Qatar’s website for easy and instant transfer.

Wyndham is a tough program to get outsized value from, so let me outline your redemption options and leave it to you whether or not this is how you want to use your Citi ThankYou points. I don’t suspect there will be a massive number of you that do so, especially now that you can transfer ThankYou points to American’s AAdvantage program.

• Of course you can book Wyndham Rewards Hotels. These brands are generally low end, like La Quinta^® by Wyndham, Super 8^®by Wyndham, Days Inn^® by Wyndham, and Wyndham Grand^®. The highest end brand I’m aware of that they have is Dolce and have seen some nice ones. A standard award will cost 7,500, 15,000, or 30,000 points per room (or per bedroom if applicable). If you aren’t fancy, I have seen some fantastic value where it’s a lower end property but a relatively expensive (for the property) suite for the same price as the base room. Check out the one in Saint Maarten for an example of that, though the resort has generally poor reviews. Wyndham also offers “experiences” you can book although at less than 1/3 of a cent per point, so they are a very poor value unless dumping expiring points. I stayed at Hodges Bay in Antigua for 30,000 points a night with a cash rate of over $900 a night, so I did manage a 3 cent per point redemption! Unfortunately the resort was not worth $900 a night by any stretch, but it was a solid redemption nonetheless, underscoring that these redemptions do exist within the Wyndham program. There are also many Wyndham family all-inclusive resorts that represent good value for points.
• Book Caesars Rewards properties. If you gamble you probably get good enough casino rates to make these a poor redemption but you never know. I did use once for a Las Vegas stay where the room was over $300 and I used 15,000 points. However, even if you have a status with waived resort fees with Caesars, a stay booked via Wyndham points will incur resort fees unless….
• Transfer points to Caesars Rewards. You can transfer up to 30,000 per calendar year and they will be worth one cent a piece (or you can redeem for slot credit but at only half a cent per point). Two notes about this: One is that it can take up to 2 weeks for the points to transfer, so you need a level of planning we aren’t really used to these days. The other is that these will reset the relevant point expiration from Wyndham. Since they expire 4 years after they are earned (and this shows in your account profile at Wyndham), if you are in that last year with no plans, this is a great way to save those points.

Note that Vacasa is no longer a Wyndham partner.

Wyndham is not going to be a program that many (any?) should speculatively transfer to, but if you have a redemption ready to go, 25% more only makes it better.

As a very rough average, I find I Prefer points to be in the 0.5 cent range. Can be 0.3 cents, can be 0.7 cents. The biggest challenge is searching availability at I Prefer. You’ll beed to be logged in, then go to Benefits > My Rewards > Nights With Points > Explore Properties. I suggest plugging the dates in so that it only shows you available properties. Else, you’ll go nuts as once you click into a property to check availability, you’ll have no way out except to start all over. Frustrating!

Tip: If the first screen showing the property shows a message that “points vary” that actually means it will never be bookable for points. Only if it shows a points per night value will it have availability.

If you get half a cent per I Prefer point in value out of this, that would be equivalent to getting 1.3 cents per Citi ThankYou point. Good but not great.

Avianca has really been messing with its program lately. They’ve devalued twice in the last 9 months, although in the most recent devaluation all sorts of quirks emerged with pricing. For instance a business class ticket from the US to/from Europe could be 69,000 miles or it could be 80,000 miles.

All of the same issues I’ve always had around Lifemiles customer service remain. I don’t want to ever have to deal with a schedule change than needs a ticket reissued with them again, and sometimes the website shows phantom availability and phone agents are often unable to help after incredibly long hold times.

You can also stack a Lifemiles+ membership with this (from $20 / month or free if you have the Lifemiles Amex). If you found a business class ticket for 69,000 miles, after the 10% lifemiles+ discount and 25% transfer bonus, it would be a great deal at 49,680 – if you know the risks of Lifemiles bookings and are ok with that.

So,  for expert Lifemiles users, this could be a great deal…. but would I speculatively transfer? I would not.

Redeem for flights starting at 6,000 points. We like using points for domestic Delta flights (when there is availability!) as well as for SkyTeam flights and, of course, ANA First and Business Class flights. Virgin’s own flight rewards are dynamically priced but with high surcharges. I’d been seeing a lot of Upper Class seats from 29,000 points but I’m not seeing much now so do some homework on what you are hoping to book before transferring.

ANA First and Business class awards:

• First Class to/from Japan from West Coast: 145,000 points Round Trip
• First Class to/from Japan from East Coast: 170,000 points Round Trip
• Business Class to/from Japan from West Coast: 105,000 points Round Trip
• Business Class to/from Japan from East Coast: 120,000 points Round Trip

(Note that you can book one way for half the price of the points price listed. Also you must call to book these. Find availability on United’s site first. If you see it there, Virgin can usually, but no always, book the same for much less.)