CreditCards/AirMiles Thread

[SKC]

I have read a lot about AirMiles points and how many people manage to buy air tickets for themselves or their family members just by using the miles/points accumulated using Credit Card payments.

Recently read about one person able to fund his father and uncle's ticket from India to USA and back solely by miles/point earned by Credit Card expenditure.

Despite being a somewhat technically sound person, I have never able to figure out this whole AirMile things.

Can someone explain in simple language and step by step who to do the same:
1. Accumulate Air miles? which CC provide better features and points.
2. How to link it with some airline?
3. How to track the miles earned and how to redeem when needed?

 

[pythonlover]

I regularly use credit cards. So I can answer your questions.

1. How to accumulate air miles? —
   1. By simply spending through the card. Transactions through CC give reward points / air miles (nomenclature varies card to card and bank to bank).
   2. For eg, if you are purchasing clothes through Myntra or dining at some restaurant, make the payment using the CC.
   3. However, there are some restricted criteria which don’t give any reward point. Eg : utility payments, wallet loading, etc. These exclusions vary bank to bank and card to card.
2. Which CC provides better features and points? —
   1. Well this varies person to person. Usually there are 2 types of CCs : Reward points (which give reward points / air miles) and cash back cards.
   2. Cash back cards —
      1. Cash back cards give back a % of expenditure directly back to you. It is just like money. The best cash back cards in the market are SBI Cash Back (5% cash back on most online spends), ICICI Amazon Pay (5% cash back in Amazon Pay wallet on Amazon spends, if have prime membership), HDFC Swiggy & HDFC Millennia.
      2. Each of these cards have unique features. A person has to select cards as per his need.
      3. For eg, if you order food through Swiggy, HDFC Swiggy card offers 10% cash back up to Rs 1500 per statement. So you can order Rs 15000 worth of food from Swiggy and get 1500 Rs back.
      4. Keep in mind that most of the cards have annual membership fee. So a person has to get back at least that amount back from the card for the card to be beneficial. For eg, HDFC Swiggy card has annual fee of Rs 500 + GST.
   3. Reward Point cards —
      1. Another type of card is Reward point (RPs) / air miles card. These cards give RPs back instead of straight cash. These cards are mainly lifestyle and travel oriented.
      2. While cash back cards are usually for people with low spends, RP cards are targeted for high spenders who travel and dine.
      3. Some of the best cards which offer RPs are HDFC Infinia (usually considered the best overall card in the market), HDFC Diners Club Black, Axis Magnus Burgundy, Axis Atlas, Amex Plat Travel, Amex Plat Charge etc.
      4. These cards usually have high annual fees. For eg, Infinia has an annual fee of Rs 12500. Annual fee for such cards can go as high as 3-5 lakhs (Axis Primus, Amex Centurion etc).
      5. These cards reward more on certain lifestyle. Eg : Infinia / DCB give 33% reward points on hotels and 16.66% on flights.
      6. There are also co-branded cards reward more on spending on their ecosystem. Eg : Axis Vistara used to give Vistara flight tickets on spends.
3. How to link it with some airline? —
   1. The bank’s app will have option to link the reward points wallet / account to air line account.
4. How to track the miles earned and how to redeem when needed? —
   1. You can track the miles on bank’s app and redeem on bank’s given platform. Eg: SmartBuy is the HDFC platform for redemption.

Feel free to ask more questions.

 

[SKC]

How to move the Airmiles/Points to Airline account?

By airline account do you mean simply registering with Airlines like Indigo and transfer points there?

I have been using CC for 15 years now. I have accumulated innumerous points but struggled to use the points properly.

The very first card I had was a SBI Petro Card. The guy who activated it for me guaranteed I can get a full refill after certain expenditure. However, the first time I went to fuel up using it none of the Petrol Pump had support for it. I tried purchasing stuff from SBI Rewards site but they could only give Pizza discount coupons and 1 Lunch box, rest all the stuff was like worth crazy amount of reward points and simply out of reach.

Then I had HDFC CC which turned to be much better as I could use Airport Lounges so many times that it seemed more of worth due to Lounge access only. but now HDFC also has changed their CC rules a lot and limited the benefits. They also had like 1-2% cashback and I could get the points back to my account in terms of INR easily.​

 

[sameer]

How to move the Airmiles/Points to Airline account?

By airline account do you mean simply registering with Airlines like Indigo and transfer points there?

I have been using CC for 15 years now. I have accumulated innumerous points but struggled to use the points properly.

The very first card I had was a SBI Petro Card. The guy who activated it for me guaranteed I can get a full refill after certain expenditure. However, the first time I went to fuel up using it none of the Petrol Pump had support for it. I tried purchasing stuff from SBI Rewards site but they could only give Pizza discount coupons and 1 Lunch box, rest all the stuff was like worth crazy amount of reward points and simply out of reach.

Then I had HDFC CC which turned to be much better as I could use Airport Lounges so many times that it seemed more of worth due to Lounge access only. but now HDFC also has changed their CC rules a lot and limited the benefits. They also had like 1-2% cashback and I could get the points back to my account in terms of INR easily.​

Don't know how it works for other credit cards, but Amex has a portal once you login and you can transfer your membership points to the airline/ hotel of your choice with your Frequent flyer number.

I believe the CC issuer/bank needs to have a tie up with the airline, otherwise I don't think you can transfer the points. Big banks will have better tie ups