Knowledge Hub · Glossary
Loyalty Currency
A loyalty currency is any branded points or miles a program issues, such as airline miles or hotel points. Each one only has value inside its own program or among that program's partners. Understanding which currency you hold tells you where it can go and what it is worth.
What it means in practice
Not all points are the same money. An airline mile, a hotel point, and a bank's transferable point are three different currencies with three different sets of rules, partners, and values. Lumping them together as points is how people misjudge what a balance can do.
Knowing the currency also sets your expectations on value. A flexible bank currency can move to many partners, while a single airline or hotel currency is confined to one program and rises or falls with that program's choices alone.
Example
You might hold 50,000 of an airline's miles, 50,000 of a hotel chain's points, and 50,000 transferable bank points, three separate currencies worth very different amounts depending on how each is used.
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