Look at what’s actually on the transfer board this month.
Chase offered 100% to IHG. Rove offered 25% to Frontier. Amex offered 30% to Virgin Atlantic. Citi is offering 20% to Flying Blue. Capital One offered 30% to EVA Air.
Rank those by headline percentage and you get exactly the wrong answer. The 100% is close to the worst deal on the list. The 20% is arguably the best.
That inversion isn’t an accident, and it’s getting more pronounced.
The pattern underneath
Sort the same list by what the destination currency is actually worth and the picture flips.
IHG points run around half a cent. Doubling them gets you to roughly a cent of hotel value per Chase point — while those same Chase points transfer 1:1 into airline programs where two to five cents is routine. The 100% bonus is a discount on a product you shouldn’t be buying.
Frontier miles are worse. Virgin, EVA and Flying Blue are all genuinely useful, and their bonuses cluster in the 20–30% range.
The reason is unglamorous. A bonus into a weak currency is cheap to fund, because the issuing program is handing out something it can print. A bonus into a strong currency costs real money, because those points get redeemed against seats with genuine value. So the weak currencies can afford spectacular percentages and the strong ones can’t.
The number is marketing. The currency is the product.
The prediction
Expect the headline percentages to keep inflating while the good bonuses stay modest.
Specifically, over the next 18 months I’d expect: more 100%-and-up offers into hotel programs with dynamic pricing, more novelty bonuses into small or newly-launched currencies chasing attention, and the genuinely valuable transfers — the ones into programs with published charts and real partner access — to stay parked in that unglamorous 20–30% band.
I’d also expect at least one program to run a number north of 100% and for it to be, on inspection, a bad trade.
The reason I’m confident is that the incentives all point one direction. Big percentages generate coverage. Coverage generates transfers. Transfers move balances out of flexible currencies — which is the entire strategic objective, because a point sitting in Chase or Amex can go anywhere, and a point sitting in IHG can only go to IHG.
Every transfer bonus is, structurally, an argument to give up optionality. Sometimes that argument is worth accepting. The percentage is not how you tell.
How to read the board instead
Start with the currency, never the number. Ask what a point in the destination program is worth and whether you can actually spend it. If you can’t answer both, the bonus is irrelevant.
Ask what you’re giving up. Flexible points are worth a premium precisely because they’re undecided. Converting them is a one-way door, and the bonus is the fee you’re being paid to walk through it.
Have the redemption first. Not a plan to find one. An actual seat, on actual dates, that you have actually looked up.
Do those three things and the transfer board becomes very quiet, very fast. Most months there’s nothing on it for you. That’s the correct outcome, and it’s the one nobody writes headlines about.
