In the olden days, when science and superstition were the same thing and leeches were considered the ultimate medical treatment, there was an art called alchemy.
The alchemists wanted to turn base metals, such as lead, into gold. Somehow, despite being unable to perform this for literally hundreds of years, alchemists remained employed in the courts of many major countries well into the 19th century. Go figure.
Well today, I’ll do these sorcerers of mad science one better and walk you through, step-by-step, how to convert your annual credit card credits from coupons into cash.
1. American Express Platinum Card & Business Platinum Card
The American Express Platinum Card and Business Platinum Card from American Express are ones that we’ve covered a lot, and with good reason. The insurance is hefty, the benefits and welcome bonus are simply superlative, and they’re some of the “last cards standing” offering worldwide lounge access.
However, the annual fees recently increased to $799 (all figures in CAD) – yikes. Fortunately, the $200 annual travel credit that comes with every Platinum Card can be as good as cash.
You can begin the process of turning the credit into cash by booking a refundable hotel that will charge you in full now on Amex Travel’s website. Make sure you’re logged in and charge the cost of your room to your American Express Platinum Card or Business Platinum Card.
You’ll also want to give yourself a little leeway on time here – booking for tomorrow night is a bad idea.
Before checking out, you’ll notice a checkbox that says “Use Travel Credit”. It’ll look something like this:
Ensure that it’s checked before completing your transaction – if it isn’t, you (or a customer service representative) will need to cancel the booking and start from square one. If you’ve done everything right, in a few days, you’ll see the charge and the credit posted to your account.
Once it posts, you may decide that your weekend staycation at a five-star hotel no longer seems worth it to you. Grab the phone and call American Express Travel.
Upon deciding to cancel the room, your transaction amount will be refunded, but the $200 travel credit will remain on the account.
You’re done! If you feel more personable, you can also make the initial booking via telephone, but I prefer online.
2. HSBC World Elite Mastercard
If you’re a legacy cardholder of the HSBC World Elite Mastercard, you’ll have access to the card’s annual $100 travel enhancement credit.
Fortunately, cashing this out is a breeze – especially with HSBC’s enhanced website layout.
When it comes time to redeem your $100 travel enhancement credit, you may wish to use of my favourite budget travel sites: Hotels.com. You can also use Expedia or another third-party travel agency – just keep in mind that it’s vital that this hotel charges you now, but can be refunded later.
Book a hotel room costing more than $100 with dates far out enough to give yourself ample time to change your mind. Wait for the purchase to post. Then go to the HSBC website, login, and navigate to the “Redeem rewards points” portal.
Then look for the “Travel” tab at the top panel, and click “Travel Enhancement Credit”. So long as your third-party booking has posted to your Mastercard, it’ll show up here. You’ll have 60 days from the date of posting to apply the $100 travel credit.
Once the credit posts, you can proceed with cancelling your booking on whichever platform you used in the first place, thus netting the $100 credit.
3. BMO eclipse Visa Cards
If you’re not familiar with BMO Rewards, you’ll want to check the lifestyle credits available on two of the eclipse cards out because of how easy they are to use.
For example, take a look at the terms and conditions for the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Privilege* Card, which boasts an annual fee of $499:
“Primary Cardholders will be eligible to receive a $200 statement credit each year (annual period starts on January 1st of every year). The Account will be credited within two statement cycles after making a purchase that is equal to or greater than the total amount of the statement credit on the Account, provided the Account is open and in good standing at the time of payout. This offer is subject to change. Primary Cardholders are limited to a maximum of one $200 credit within the annual period. If you transfer your Account into a different product and back into an eligible product within the same annual period, or if you cancel and reapply for an eligible product within the same annual period, you will not be entitled to a subsequent $200 credit in that annual period. Any additional lifestyle credit of $200 awarded to the Primary Cardholder within the annual period as a result may be subject to claw back.”
What this means is you need to make a single purchase over $200 in order to trigger the credit, but the purchase itself doesn’t need to be anything specific, and even better, the credit posts automatically.
So if you, say, apply for and receive this credit card in October, you can use your lifestyle credit to offset the annual fee to $299. Then you can use the credit again in January to reduce the fee even further!
This would make the effective first-year cost of the card only $99, which isn’t too shabby for a couple hundred dollars of BMO Rewards points!
You could use this credit to purchase a new TV or other items you desire, but one of the best ways to liquidate is by buying gift cards at grocery stores. Remember that the BMO eclipse cards earn 5x points on groceries, so it’s a good card for that purpose irrespective of the lifestyle credit.
There’s also the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite* Card, which has a lifestyle credit that works in an identical manner, albeit at the reduced rate of $50 per calendar year.
Still, not a bad backup plan if your income level doesn’t qualify for the superior card, as the $50 lifestyle credits can be double-dipped to reduce the $120 annual fee to $20 in the first year.
As these BMO lifestyle credits go by calendar year, be sure to add using them to your Miles & Points tasks for the end of the year.
Conclusion
To wrap up, annual credits on credit cards can usually be transformed into cash with a little effort. All of us Miles & Points enthusiasts do have one thing in common with the alchemists of antiquity: we want to find the best and fastest ways to turn our perks into tangible benefits.
Sometimes these methods take a bit more work than one would like, but if you follow these techniques and keep them in mind, I’m sure you’ll be getting much better value out of your credits than you may have previously.
Until next time, have fun doing mad science on your travel credits.
Thanks for killing the Aventura loophole Kirin!
What is going on in this comment section? First of all, admit that much of what you know is from bloggers. Then, realize that this info is easily available across the internet for “employees” to see on this blog and many others. And, this whole blog is full of such tips and tricks, so I’m not sure why the concern of exposing loopholes falls on this post alone. Are the keyboard warriors above not brave enough to speak their mind on El Jefe Ricky’s posts? Or just hypocrites?
Greasy as usual
Nice article Kirin – well written and lots of value.
I do not like articles like this which alert FIs about how people can game the system. Please do not publish more of this type.
No
For HSBC – can you book a hotel to get the $100 credit? I was under the impression the travel enhancement credit is for baggage fees, seat upgrade etc?
Expedia works really well for cashing out the HSBC travel enhancement credit and the points.
Give it a shot 😉
Can I book an actual hotel reservation that I am actually planning to go and the costs is for example $250. Then apply the $100 travel enhancement credit and then apply HSBC points for the remaining $150 balance?
Thanks Kirin. This works.
Hey great article boss. The statement credit cards aren’t for high flyers but there is a place for them. Thanks for showing them with nice pictures too. Makes me more willing to travel down those BMO and Aventura paths .. ooo scaaary ~~
Are you able to use the Uber pass on your gold usa amex in Canada? Any tips on how to use it as use vpn but shows uber pass not available in your region Canada.
There was a loophole where merely changing your delivery address to that of the US gave you usage of the US credits through doing pickup orders, but that got fixed, and afaik the pass will be dependent on that delivery address so no way to use in Canada.
I’ve done all forms of alchemy sans those requiring animal sacrifice and still nada.
The juice was not worth the $10 a month in credits and free Eats Pass but it was a matter of principle!
US Uber credits are only available in US and not in Canada.
Lol ok margot
1. Maybe you should mention in your post that CIBC Aventura Visa Infinite Privilege card requires minimum annual income $150,000 individual or $200,000 household.
2. HSBC hotel bookings are shown under Travel Rewards and not under Travel Enhancement Credit. The Travel Enhancement Credit eligible purchases are airline baggage fee, airline seat upgrade or lounge pass. Of course you can still redeem your points for hotel reservations and then cancel refundable bookings, but maybe better to transfer your points to some airline program.
Bro. Delete this post. Otherwise all of us aren’t getting these bonuses in a couple of weeks once daddy HSBC sees.
HSBC knows..
Coming soon ladies and gentleman program enhancement / cuts on all these credits, you would have the team here to thank for that!
Will you do a similar post on how to “cash out” credit card points via similar alchemy?
Which ones were you thinking? Most of them are a bit harder than this, or the value isn’t exactly great.
Maybe I shouldn’t have implied converting to actual cash, but instead was thinking of converting to something a bit more fungible to be used toward flights (or other travel).
Ricky already did a post on leveraging the Amex Fixed Points Travel Program at the sweet-spot to effectively convert MR-S into Aeroplan. However, in the middle of that process is just an Air Canada (dollar-denominated) travel voucher that some of us might prefer instead of the equivalent Aeroplan points – i.e. not wanting to implicitly buy Aeroplan points at 1.8 cents. So is there a way to make use of that travel voucher efficiently without being stuck to the Amex travel agency? (Maybe not necessarily for Air Canada but perhaps for another airline – I think I’ve heard that Alaska lets you put unused tickets into their “wallet.”)
And if it works for Amex, I would think it could work for other programs that have similar sweet-spot redemption thresholds like RBC Avion and CIBC Aventura.
For Aventura, I know it’s quite difficult to turn to cash or “sweet spot,” and have been conducting some research into it. BMO is one of the easier ones to liquidate but it gets devalued biannually…. As for Avion, I have different uses for it, in all likelihood you’re best off getting hotel gift cards when they go on sale (though 1cpp isn’t terrible), or transferring to BA Avios or AsiaMiles, as those are programs where you’ll get more value assuming you can accumulate enough quantity.
Also as for your remark about Avios and Asia Miles, personally I have enough from US cards that it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile option, personally. I take your point that transferability can have a lot of upside, though. I do think I can do better than 1cpp or getting hotel gift cards using some creative gymnastics.
So for Avion I was thinking I would use them to buy a short-haul flight as close to C$350 (in base fare) as possible. Then refund that to a voucher of sorts and use the value toward a flight I actually want (or can make a mutually beneficial trade with a friend who’d use it).
In practice the mechanics can get very messy.
Not all airlines let you refund to a voucher (or “travel bank” etc.), and I wouldn’t want to be stuck with a ticket where I’d have to use the credit card’s travel agency to reissue it. I think JetBlue, Alaska and WestJet would work, but I’m not so sure. Also booking a US domestic route would help to minimize the cash co-pay beyond the base fare, but would be less useful for most Canadians.
Hey Kirin, thanks for the article! Any knowledge on whether we can cash out with MBNA Rewards?
Just get an Amazon or Walmart gift card. You get ~1% less value compared to using the points for travel but you don’t have to deal with a clunky online portal and can have cash in hand without having to wait until you have enough points to travel.
The Business Platinum has a travel credit? Where do I see that lol
Thanks for sharing all the ins-and-outs with the bank employees Kirin! Making it nice and easy for program “enhancements”.
These credits are so easy to overlook over time. Best to keep notes.