Frequent Miler on the Air - Do you lose your points when you cancel your credit card? | Coffee Break Ep64 | 7-22-25

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Today, we'll talk about how to make sure you don't lose your points when you cancel a credit card. Since this varies by bank or points-type, we'll discuss tips for each situation.Do you lose your points when you cancel your credit card?(00:37) - Airline and Hotel cards... no, you won't lose your points.(02:32) - Bank cards... yes, you could lose your points.(03:48) - Chase solutions(06:10) - Amex solutions(09:27) - Citi's weird rules(12:17) - Capital One solutions(16:06) - Quick summaryVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voy Escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. Today's coffee break, Do you lose your points when you cancel your credit card? Yeah, you know, this is a common area of confusion because if you just call and ask a representative, representatives will sometimes

give out unclear or sometimes just inaccurate information about this. So, it's important to know what to expect ahead of time and to know the answer rather than just rely on the answer that somebody gives you over the phone, right? So let's talk about this. So if you have an airline or hotel credit card, when you cancel your card, do you lose your airline miles or your hotel points?

No, you don't. This is the thing that's the most often inaccurate thing that call center reps will say. You call up to cancel your Delta card, your American Airlines card, whatever, and they'll tell you, well, if you cancel, you're gonna lose all your points. And that's just flat out wrong.

I mean, I'm sure they think that, but they're wrong about that. The airline miles that you've earned or hotel points, if it's a hotel credit card, they lie with the airliner hotel program, not with the bank that issues the credit card. You can lose some. So if you've done some spend

and the points haven't yet gone to the airliner hotel program, it's possible that you won't get those few points at that point when you cancel. But in general, the answer's really easy there. The answer's no. Right, and it's also probably worth mentioning the same is true of your free night certificates

or companion certificates. Any of that stuff that is, again, in your hotel loyalty program account or your airline loyalty program account. Those things in general stay there with some rare exceptions like the Bank of America Alaska Airlines companion certificate for instance requires using the Bank of America card to pay for it. So maybe you can't use that one after you cancel the card. But but many other types you certainly can. So anyway, generally speaking, the stuff that belongs to the loyalty program, it's already there, it's done, and you don't have to worry about it.

So and that's right. Great. Feel free to cancel those, cancel those airline and hotel cards if you want to. You're not going to lose your airline and hotel points when you do most cases. What about bank cards? A lot of banks have their own point systems. We of course always talk about transferable points in particular, that we love transferable points because they let you move those bank points to airline or hotel

programs when you need them and to the right kind of program when you need them. What about there? What if you have your bank points and you want to cancel that card issued by that bank? Well, then you might lose your points depending on what you do before you cancel that card. You don't have to. And so we're going to talk about how you can keep them alive. First of all, if you're a New York State resident, New York State residents get 90 days after closing the account to use the points. So while the rest of this advice will generally apply to everybody, that one piece of advice is important. If you live in New York state that you'll get 90 days from the day you close the card to use the points, even if otherwise people in Pennsylvania or New Jersey or wherever

else would have to worry about those points going away in New York. Residents don't immediately anyway. But let's talk about the specific ones because each transferable currency has some different rules and caveats and quirks that you need to know about in terms of keeping the points alive because you can keep them alive but the way you do so varies a bit from one to another. So let's start up with chase here with chase if you're going to cancel your chase credit card how do you prevent losing the points?

Yeah, let me back up for a second though for I think this is true for all of the programs that if you're able to product change to a no annual fee card that that earns the same type of points that you started with then you should be able to do that without losing your points. So it's not really a way of preserving your points if you cancel, because this isn't canceling, this is product changing, but it's a way of keeping the points alive. Now the points may not be worth as much when you do that, but it keeps them alive and that way if you apply for another card that makes the points more valuable, you could probably make those points valuable again. So that's just backing up. So now talk about chase. So, you know, one option,

like let's say you wanna cancel your Sapphire Reserve card, for example, an option is to product change to a fee-free Freedom card that keeps your points alive. Again, points aren't necessarily worth as much then, but the other thing you can do is if you have other chase cards that are in ultimate rewards points in your household, so either you have them yourself

or someone else in your household has them, it's possible to do a combined points and move your points to that other person. Then you can cancel your card and then that way you won't lose your points. Yeah, or combine points with yourself with one of your other cards. So if you have a Sapphire Reserve card and you have a Freedom card, for instance, you could move your points by choosing combined points in the ultimate rewards portal there to move your points from your sapphire reserve card to your freedom card and then you could cancel your sapphire reserve if you wanted to so that's certainly an option that's available or

like Greg said to another household member business co-owner depending on the card that you have so that one is relatively easy yep go ahead and if you're gonna move to someone else if it's the first time you've ever moved points to that other person, you do have to call Chase, set up that connection, and then once that connection is set up, you can move the points online from your account to theirs.

Very good. Excellent. Alright, so that's Chase. Now let's talk about Amex. If you've got a card that earns Amex membership rewards points, what can you do to keep those points alive? Yeah, so with Amex, as long as you have any card open that earns membership rewards points, you're free to cancel the card that you want to cancel, and your membership rewards points won't go away. So for example, if you have both a Amex Platinum card and an Amex Green card, you can cancel your Platinum card and you don't have to worry

because your membership rewards points will still be there because you have that Green card still open. So the trick with Amex, if you're trying to get rid of annual fees is make sure you have, ideally the blue business plus card, which has no annual fee, earns membership rewards points. And as long as you have that open,

you can cancel any other membership rewards cards that you have, and you don't have to worry about that. You could also open a free checking account with MX and that will preserve your points but. The ability to transfer to partners is severely limited at that point so there is some ability but it's not nearly as good as if you had for example the blue business plus switch gives you the full transfer power of membership rewards points two quick points of clarification on MX that I want to mention. One is that they automatically pull your points by social security number. And so that's what Greg said meant when he was saying that you as long as you hold one that earns membership rewards and cancel whatever else, because the points are automatically

in one pile and so they'll still be accessible. But the additional thing I wanted to add here to that is sometimes who will get confused because if you've got an authorized user card that belongs to the primary account belongs to like a spouse for instance that's separate so even though it'll show up under your Amex login so for instance if my wife has me as an employee card on her Blue Business Plus that employee card might show up in my Amex login but if that's my only other card that earns membership rewards points, then I can't cancel my platinum card and keep my points. I got to make sure that I have a bit blue business plus where I'm the primary cardholder

in order to keep my points. I add that point of clarification because every now and then people get confused when they see that because they see the multiple MX cards in their account and they say, oh, well, so as long as I have one that has my name on it, I can keep my my points alive the answer is as long as you have one where you're the primary card holder keep that in mind Yeah, that's a really good point the other thing to know about AmEx cards is you cannot move the membership rewards points to another person's account so it doesn't matter if they're in the same household or not So it doesn't matter if they're in the same household or not. Amex does not let you do that. What you can do is if they are an authorized user on your account and have been an authorized

user for at least 90 days, you could transfer the points to their loyalty programs, like to their airline or hotel programs, as a way of not losing the points. But I mean, that's a one way transfer. So once you've done that, you know, it's stuck in that hotel or airline program. So we don't like to do that if we could help it. But if that's your only option, that's better than nothing. Very good. All right. Next up, what's up with cities? City's a weird one, right?

City's really weird because with City, you know, you could have a bunch of different cards that earn thank you rewards points. And in order to use the points together, there's an option to pull them together in the thank you rewards portal. And so it looks like one big bucket of points to you, just like Emex looks like one big bucket of points. So it would be understandable if you thought, oh, if I close my Citi Strata Premier card, those points will still be there because they're pooled together with my double cash points. Well, you'd be wrong. Even though they all appear in one big bucket, they are tracked separately. And if you close your City Premier card and there were points on there that you would

earn from that card, those will go away. Yeah. So what do you do in order to kind of avoid that? Maybe not even completely avoid it, but what do you do in that case so you don't lose your points? You can't cancel and avoid losing your points. What you can do is you can product change to a no annual fee card that earns thank you points.

And that's probably, that's the most straightforward, probably best way of doing this. That's the most straightforward, probably best way of doing this. Other things you can do are you can move your points to another person's Citi thank you account, but then the clock starts ticking because your points expire after, what is it, 60 days, something like that? I can't remember if it's 60 or 90. I think 60. I think you're right.

I forget, 60 or 90 days, whatever. But the point is, if they're not used in that short amount of time, they'll expire as well. So if for some reason a product change is not something you want to do, really your best option is to transfer the points to, again, a hotel or airline program so that the points won't expire. Yeah, now we should mention that we're talking about product changing. We've mentioned that a few times and so Greg said the most straightforward way is if you have a city premiere call and see if you can product change to a double cash or a custom cash or some other card that earns thank you points in order to keep the points alive. So we should mention how do you product change?

Well with most issuers just call the phone number on the back of your card and tell them that you know you're not interested in keeping this card you'd like to product change it to a different card which is different than applying for a new card right you're not going to apply for a new card you'd like to product change the card you have into something else and that's usually a pretty easy process with all the issuers. It can vary a little bit and Citi can be a little weird in terms of which cards they allow you to product change to. But keep in mind, you'll want to product change to one that earns thank you points

if you want to keep your thank you points alive. Yeah, really good point. Okay, now speaking of product change weirdnesses, let's talk about Capital One. What can you do? You've got your Capital One miles and you want to cancel your card? What are your options there, Nick? Well, you can move them between your own capital one accounts. So if you have another, let's say you have a capital one venture card and you'd like to cancel that card. If you have another card in your name that earns capital one miles, maybe a capital One Venture One card or Venture X card or a Capital One Spark Miles card, then you can easily on your own move the rewards from the card you want to cancel to one of the cards that you're keeping. So you'd want to do that before you cancel the card that you'd like to cancel. So you could do that easily online self-service. So that's very simple.

If you have a Capital One cash back card that you'd like to cancel and you also have a Capital One miles card, you could move the cash back to your miles card at a rate of one cent to one mile. So let's say you have $500 in cash back on your Capital One Quicksilver card and you'd like to get rid of that card,

but you also have a venture card. Well, you could move that $500 in cash back to 50,000 miles on your venture card. And again, you can do that yourself in your Capital One login, super easy to do. However, if you're not keeping a card that earns Capital One miles in your name or cash back in your name,

you also have the ability to move points to another card holder. To do that, you'll have to call the number on the back of your card, and you'll need, of course, your card information and the card information for the person to whom you're moving the rewards but interestingly about capital one, they'll allow you to move your rewards to anybody with no annual limits or anything. So we should have mentioned we

didn't mention with city. There's I think there's an annual limit as to how many points you can transfer to another person. We didn't mention that capital one does not have any such limit nor does chase for the record. There's no limited as far as I know, in terms of how many points you could move to another person within your household with chase ultimate rewards points. But unique with capital one is that you can transfer the points to anybody. I could transfer my points to Greg, if I wanted. So that would keep your points alive and with the other person, perhaps you have a spouse or a family member who's got a card that earns

capital one miles. You can keep your miles sort of alive in their account and then maybe someday down the road, they could transfer them back to you. If you got another card that earns capital one miles product changing is something you haven't heard me mention yet because it's not straightforward with capital one. You might be able to product change. You might not and which options you have vary. So it's not clear whether you'll even be able to product change and if you can, to which card you'll be

able to product change, but you can call Capital One and find out. Sometimes you can find those product change options in your online login also. So if you're able to find that, you can see what options you have available to you. Usually you've got like maybe three options at most and it varies person to person. So it's really hard to know what you're going to have in terms of your product change options. One cool thing with Capital One and this is true of Amex as well is that if you product change to a cheaper card or free card, as long as it still earns the same type of points, it'll still have the same power. The points will have the same transferability and power and everything.

So that's really nice. That's not the case with Citi or Chase, by the way, because both of those have fee-free cards that have less power for transferring or for getting better value for your points in other ways. Yep, yeah, that's a great point. With a Capital One Venture One card, you can transfer to all of their transfer partners at the same regular transfer ratios as someone with a Venture or Venture X card. So that is nice that you have a no annual fee option that keeps the points transferable. And same thing with AMEX, like you said.

All right, super high level summary. If you have an airline or hotel card, feel free to cancel and you'll keep your points. If you have a bank issued card, a bank branded card that has its own type of points, then you just need to be really careful and think about what you're doing. Consider product change options or other options to move your points to another card or make sure you have another card available that can keep those

points alive. Don't forget if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get in our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media and check out ourquent Miler on the Air episodes dropping every Friday.