The Trick for Better Value Credit Card Point Transfers to KrisFlyer

Many Australians choose to transfer their credit card reward points to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer – and it’s easy to see why. KrisFlyer generally offers good award availability on Singapore Airlines flights from Australia to Singapore and beyond, including in premium cabins. KrisFlyer also has competitive redemption rates, with no carrier surcharges.

But there are two major pain points when transferring Australian credit card reward points to KrisFlyer:

• The first is the typically more expensive transfer rate. While you can generally convert credit card points to Virgin Australia Velocity Points at a 2:1 rate, transfers to KrisFlyer are usually at a 3:1 rate.
• The second is KrisFlyer’s hard three-year expiry of miles. Unless you’re a PPS Club member, KrisFlyer miles expire three years after they land in your account – regardless of your account activity.

Fortunately, there’s a loophole that lets you bypass the expiration issue – while potentially also netting you more KrisFlyer miles than you would get if you transferred your credit card points directly to Singapore Airlines’ loyalty program!

It can make sense to transfer via Velocity instead

Rather than transferring your credit card points directly to KrisFlyer, you could instead transfer them first to Virgin Australia’s Velocity program.

From Velocity, you could then transfer your points onwards to KrisFlyer at a rate of 1 KrisFlyer mile for every 1.55 Velocity Points – but only when you’re ready to use them. That way, the points will sit in your Velocity account and won’t expire as long as you have activity in your Velocity account at least once every two years.

Once you’re ready to use them, you can then simply transfer the exact number of points that you need from your Velocity account to your KrisFlyer account – and then immediately redeem them for a KrisFlyer award.

This trick works best if you want to transfer points from Amex Membership Rewards, ANZ Rewards, NAB Rewards or St.George Amplify Rewards to KrisFlyer. With each of these programs, transfers to Velocity are at a 2:1 rate, while transfers to KrisFlyer are 3:1.

Get ahead by doing this during a Velocity transfer bonus

In general, you would end up with slightly fewer KrisFlyer miles if you transferred your credit card points to KrisFlyer via Velocity. But there is an exception.

Twice per year, Velocity Frequent Flyer offers a bonus when you transfer credit card points to Velocity. For example, right now, Velocity is offering a 15% bonus on transfers from credit card reward programs (or a 20% bonus if you’ve opted in to auto-transfer your credit card points to Velocity).

With the current promotion, you’ll get a 15% bonus if you manually transfer points from a participating credit card program to Velocity at least once during both November and December 2025. You’ll receive the 15% bonus points by 31 January 2026.

Velocity runs similar promotions around twice per year, typically launching each November and May. So, you could time your transfers to make the most of these offers.

Let’s do some maths…

So, why is this a good idea? Let’s do the sums:

Say, for example, that you earned 100,000 Amex Membership Rewards points with the current American Express Explorer card sign-up bonus offer. (This particular offer is available at the time of writing but expires on 2 December 2025.)

Amex Membership Rewards points transfer at a 2:1 rate to Velocity, or 3:1 to KrisFlyer.

• If you converted your 100,000 Amex points directly to KrisFlyer at a 3:1 rate, you’d receive 33,333 KrisFlyer miles and the three-year expiry clock would instantly start ticking.
• If you converted 100,000 Amex points to Velocity without any applicable bonus, you’d receive 50,000 Velocity Points. You could then transfer those to KrisFlyer at the 1.55:1 conversion rate and get 32,258 KrisFlyer miles. That’s slightly fewer KrisFlyer miles, but they wouldn’t expire as long as they’re sitting in your active Velocity account
• If you converted 100,000 Amex points to Velocity with a 15% bonus, you’d receive 57,500 Velocity Points. You could then convert those to 37,096 KrisFlyer miles – once you’re ready to use them.

Using the latter method, you end up with more KrisFlyer miles and don’t risk them expiring if you don’t redeem them all within three years!

Of course, you could also simply choose to redeem your points directly through Velocity if that works out to give you a better deal when you’re ready to book your reward flights. Either way, more options are good!

Have you used this trick to get a better deal when transferring credit card points to KrisFlyer? Let us know on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: