Bilt Pausing Points Transfers to Emirates, Making it the Third Program To Do So

Updated: May 26, 2025, 11:24am CDT

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Bilt Rewards To Pause Transfers to Emirates Skywards
Growing List of Pauses With Emirates Skywards
Final Thoughts

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Strange things are happening with Emirates Skywards. Bilt will pause points transfers to Emirates for a few weeks, joining a growing list of credit card rewards programs that will temporarily disable transfers to the Dubai-based airline.

Plus, transfer ratios from Citi to Emirates will be reduced in a few months. Put together, this is set to be a strange summer for anyone wanting to use their credit card points with Emirates Skywards.

Here’s the latest.

Bilt Rewards To Pause Transfers to Emirates Skywards

Bilt Rewards has posted a notice on its partner page for Emirates, saying that points transfers will be paused from May 27 to June 19, 2025. Typically, transfers from Bilt to Emirates Skywards happen at a 1:1 ratio.

Bilt Emirates transfers pause — Image Credit: Bilt

Unfortunately, there’s no workaround listed here. Calling Bilt or Emirates is unlikely to provide a different way to transfer points for an upcoming redemption.

Growing List of Pauses With Emirates Skywards

Hopefully, this pause from Bilt is just a pause and doesn’t become permanent. Given the other news we’ve seen from Emirates lately, things aren’t smooth between Emirates Skywards and its U.S. credit card partners.

The news about Bilt pausing points transfers comes after the announcement that transfers from Amex and Chase to Emirates will be paused from May 29 to June 30, 2025. That’s slightly longer (and a bit different from) Bilt’s pause, but it’s the same timeframe when we look at the heart of the issue.

Plus, Citi’s transfers to Emirates will drop by 20% on July 27, 2025, changing the ratio from its current 1:1 transfer to a new rate of 1:0.8 (meaning you’ll get 800 Skywards miles for every 1,000 Citi ThankYou Points you transfer).

In addition to these transfer pauses and transfer rate reductions, Emirates recently made first-class award bookings available only to those with elite status. That short-notice change went into effect for Skywards members on May 12.

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Emirates Skywards also receives transfers from Brex Rewards, Capital One Rewards, and Marriott Bonvoy. It’s not known whether transfers from these programs will undergo any changes this summer.

Final Thoughts

The summer of 2025 is shaping up to be an interesting one for customers in the U.S. who want to use their credit card points with Emirates Skywards. Transfers from Citi will become 20% less valuable at the end of July, and 3 different credit card partners will temporarily pause transfers to Emirates for several weeks. Chase, Amex, and now Bilt will hopefully resume transfers to Emirates at their 1:1 rates after the pause — and hopefully according to the published dates.

We’ve reached out to Capital One, Brex, and Marriott to understand whether their transfers to Emirates will also be affected. We will provide updates if we learn anything.