20% Bonus When You Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points To Southwest

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A little surprisingly, Chase has launched its first airline transfer bonus for some time. Through 31 October 2020, Chase customers transferring Ultimate Rewards Points to Southwest Rapid Rewards will receive a 20% bonus.

Key terms & conditions

• Bonus Rapid Rewards® points (“Bonus points”) offer is valid for point transfers to your Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards account (“Rapid Rewards”) from your Chase Ultimate Rewards® account (“Ultimate Rewards”) completed between 12:00 a.m. ET on October 1, 2020 and 11:59 p.m. ET on October 31, 2020 (“Promotional Period”).
• Minimum transfer is 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
• Bonus points will be awarded by Southwest Airlines® in your Rapid Rewards account when your transfer is complete.
• You will receive 20% Bonus points for each Ultimate Rewards point transferred during the Promotional Period. For example, if you transfer 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points, you will receive a total of 1,200 Rapid Rewards points.
• You must be enrolled in Rapid Rewards with both your membership in good standing and your Ultimate Rewards credit card account open, and not in default in order to participate in this offer.
• Once you have transferred Ultimate Rewards points, they become subject to the Rapid Rewards Rules and Regulations and cannot be transferred back to your Chase Ultimate Rewards account.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the Chase Ultimate Rewards website.

Quick thoughts

Based on the value I can easily achieve with Southwest Rapid Rewards Points, I value each point at 1.30 cents each. Based on a similar methodology I value Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (UR Points) at 1.50 cents each so, as UR Points ordinarily transfer over to Southwest in a ratio of 1:1, is not a transfer that I recommend.

Now, however, this bonus changes things a little.

Through the end of this month, 1 UR Point will convert to 1.2 Southwest Rapid Rewards Points so that means that a point worth 1.50 cents will convert to points worth 1.56 cents. Based on my valuations, this transfer bonus makes a transfer to Southwest a reasonable proposition.

The 1.56 cents valuation also means that holders of the card_name looking for the best way to use UR Points to book Southwest flights are now better off transferring their points to Southwest Rapid Rewards rather than using their UR points to book the flights directly through the Chase travel portal (where the value offered is 1.5 cents/point).

Related Reading: How To Transfer Points From Chase Ultimate Rewards To Airlines

Generally speaking, I would still prefer to save my UR Points for transfers to the World of Hyatt where, even without a transfer bonus, I usually get better value than this promotion is offering…but others may differ.

If you’re considering booking a Southwest flight in the near future, you may be able to get some value out of this offer but you should be careful to work out the math before you initiate a transfer – outside of sales, the value you get out of each Southwest Point is linked to the cash cost of the fare and that makes it difficult to get outsized value.

Bottom line

Chase has launched a month long promotion for transfers of Ultimate Rewards Points to Southwest Rapid Rewards. All transfers made by 31 October 2020 will receive 20% more Rapid Rewards points than normal.