American Express and Citi Devalue Emirates Transfers
Back in April, it was announced that Citi would be devaluing their transfers to Emirates from 1:1 to 1000:800 starting on July 27thy, 2025. Now American Express is joining and will also be devaluing their transfers as of September 16th, 2025.
This means that previously if you transferred 87,000 points to Emirates you would get 87,000 Emirates Skywards miles (which is how much a one way business class seat costs from JFK to Milan). Now you would need to transfer 109,000 points to get 87,200 Skywards miles.
Will Other Credit Cards Follow?
As of now, the other major credit cards, Capital One, Chase and Bilt haven’t announced any changes in their transfer rates to Emirates but I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow suit. One of them may hold out to be a differentiator but I wouldn’t count on it.
Emirates definitely has a halo effect from their amazing first class product but they’ve also recently stopped allowing non-elite members to book first class awards. Emirates business class if perfectly fine but nothing incredible. They also pass along massive taxes and fees on top of the huge numbers of miles to book seats. We’re talking over 151,000 miles for business class from the US to Dubai plus about $1300 for a one way flight.
What is Causing this Change?
Whenever points are transferred between credit cards and their airline or hotel partners, money changes hands. When you transfer points to an airline like Emirates, the bank is essentially paying the airline to buy those miles. Each airline charges the banks different rates but it all probably averages out in the end.
Emirates was already probably one of the more expensive programs to transfer miles to as I don’t remember the last time we’ve seen a transfer bonus to Emirates yet most every other program has had one in recent memory. That tells me Emirates is likely charging more already. With this devaluation I would bet Emirates is starting to charge the banks even more.
