At last, there is confirmation, and it is not good news for frequent Emirates flyers, at least in the near term. American Express, one of the only two transfer partners for Emirates Skywards in India, will pause transfers soon, for a moment at least.

Emirates Skywards conversions to be paused

Emirates Skywards is a beneficial loyalty programme for those who fly the airline a lot or even not. It is good regarding inventory availability for premium cabin redemptions on Emirates. Skywards has been a partner with the major American card currencies, and that is how, in India, we have had Emirates Skywards available on American Express long before the Emirates Skywards ICICI Bank Credit Cards came along.

Now, to the point. In the United States, Amex, Citi, and Chase, all partners with Emirates, have announced a pause for Emirates transfers as of May 28, 2025. However, there has been no parallel announcement in India to this effect so far.

American Express just came out with an announcement. It reads,

Please note that, due to system maintenance, the option to transfer Membership Rewards points to Emirates will be unavailable, effective 28 May 2025. We apologise for the inconvenience. As you are receiving this update in advance, you still have time to make a transfer if you wish to redeem your points with Emirates before the pause takes effect.

This might not be a devaluation.

People have been fearing the worst: there will be a change in the commercials between the Banks and Skywards, and hence the pause. This may or may not be true, and I have no insider information.

However, this could, and most probably is, related to the partner’s transition to Emirates’ new loyalty management system, which Emirates has been developing with a software partner for over two years now. In that case, all transfer partners will need to pause for a bit to integrate with the new system. So, we don’t know if the ICICI Bank / Emirates co-brand cards stack and the SBI Cards transfer partnership on their SBI Cards MILES cards will also have to pause the transfers for a while.

At least American Express has notified, in good faith, that there will be a suspension without coming back with a date for resuming transfers. If we were to go by the American notifications, it might be until late June or early July before we see the transfers resume.

Bottomline

In late May 2025, Amex Membership Rewards will suspend points transfers to Emirates Skywards. While Amex has given no timeline for reinstating transfers, it might be around a month when we get this capability back. Some people suspect it is a devaluation in the making, but I think it is just a cutover to a new system.

What do you think of this Amex/ Emirates Skywards situation? And will you be transferring points to mitigate the situation in the interim?

---

Liked our articles and our efforts? Please pay an amount you are comfortable with; an amount you believe is the fair price for the content you have consumed. Please enter an amount in the box below and click on the button to pay; you can use Netbanking, Debit/Credit Cards, UPI, QR codes, or any Wallet to pay. Every contribution helps cover the cost of the content generated for your benefit.

(Important: to receive confirmation and details of your transaction, please enter a valid email address in the pop-up form that will appear after you click the ‘Pay Now’ button. For international transactions, use Paypal to process the transaction.)

We are not putting our articles behind any paywall where you are asked to pay before you read an article. We are asking you to pay after you have read the article if you are satisfied with the quality and our efforts.