Think of points from different families of credit cards and miles from different frequent flyer programs as a currency that may or may not be inter-transferable.

Why is this important?

You want to travel on a specific airline but you have no way to earn their mile at a convenient way. Thank to credit-airline partnership, you can earn credit card points on that credit card and then transfer the points to the airline frequent flyer program. For example, there is no other way to earn Asia Miles than actually flying on Cathay Pacific in Canada. But now you can use American Express Gold Reward® Card to earn Membership Reward® which is transferable to Asia Miles.

There are a lot of ways to earn Asia Miles in Canada other than this way. But undoubtedly it enables conversion without losing the value of your points.

Travel point credit card

Travel points are usually rewarded with a travel point credit card that is issued by credit card company. You can think it as a fix-valued coupon. You credit $2000 to the card. That translates to 4,000 points. It equals to $40 travel coupon (2% rebate). Most travel point credit cards have 2-5% rebate scale.

Airline (or hotel) credit card

This type of cards is co-issued by credit card companies and their airline or hotel partner. You earn miles or hotel points that are directly transferred to the partner loyalty program. This type offers slightly better flexibility than travel point credit cards. Certainly cards in this family allow point & mile transfer. In most cases, it is from hotel points to airline miles.

Hybrid credit card

You earn points on this type of credit cards too. But the points are transferable to partnered hotel loyalty programs or frequent flyer programs while you can choose to use the points like those you earned on a travel point credit card. This type of credit cards offer great flexibility.

My experience

I have 6 credit cards for travel hack. None of them is the travel point type because fix-valued points are terrible in comparison. When I want to fly YVR-HKG round trip on econ with Air Canada during Christmas, the cost is $1,500. I have 2 ways to get the tickets.

1) pay with 75,000 travel points (valued at 2% rebate)

2) pay with 62,500 miles (valued at $150).

In terms of points & miles, it’s about 20% difference. But taking flexibility into consideration, I can easily aggregate miles from cards from different credit card companies into one mileage account. But I can’t aggregate travel points from TD, RBC and CIBC.

That is why hybrid credit cards are my favorite, especially American Express Gold Reward® Card because it offers great value of points. But in Vancouver American Express is not as pervasive unfortunately. That leaves TD Visa Infinite Aeroplan® my daily card if I can’t use American Express Gold Reward®.