Australia’s Best Credit Cards for Cathay Asia Miles

Many Australian banks offer the option to transfer the points you earn on your credit card to Cathay Pacific’s frequent flyer program. This could be a good option if you’d like to redeem your points to fly with Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific.

Cathay is the popular loyalty program of Cathay Pacific. The program currency is Asia Miles, which you can of course redeem for flights and upgrades on Cathay Pacific. You can also use Asia Miles to book reward flights on other Oneworld partner airlines, including Qantas and Finnair.

Cathay often reserves more award availability on Cathay Pacific flights for its own members. So if you’d like to fly Cathay Pacific from Australia to Hong Kong, or beyond to other destinations across Asia, Europe or North America, Asia Miles can be very handy to have. You’ll often find Cathay Pacific redemption seats through Cathay that aren’t available to book using Qantas points, for example.

Although Cathay increased some of its award chart prices in 2023, redemption prices remain competitive compared to other Oneworld frequent flyer programs. Cathay also offers a Oneworld multi-carrier award, which could be used to fly around the world.

Transferring Australian credit card points to Cathay

There are no co-branded Asia Miles credit cards in Australia. But it is possible to transfer points from many credit card reward programs to Cathay Pacific’s frequent flyer program. So, you can earn Asia Miles with many Australian credit cards indirectly.

The following Australian credit card rewards programs partner with Asia Miles:

Australia’s best personal credit cards for Asia Miles

To help you compare your options, we’ve compiled a list of the highest-earning personal credit cards in Australia for Cathay Asia Miles in 2024.

For easy comparison, we’ve listed the equivalent Asia Miles earn rate per $1 spent after the points have been transferred from a credit card rewards program to Cathay.

Note: If you’re viewing this article on a smartphone, the tables above may look better if you rotate your device horizontally.

Card	Loyalty program	Annual fee	Asia Miles earned per $1	More information
Amex Platinum	Amex Membership Rewards (Ascent Premium)	$1,450	1.125
Amex Explorer	Amex Membership Rewards	$395	1
HSBC Premier (with Premier status)	HSBC Rewards Plus	$0	0.75 (up to $120,000/year)
ANZ Rewards Black	ANZ Rewards	$375	0.67 (up to $5,000/month)
Amex Essential Rewards	Amex Membership Rewards (Gateway)	$0	0.5
NAB Rewards Signature	NAB Rewards	$288	0.5 (up to $15,000/month)

The American Express Platinum and Explorer cards are both very good choices if you want to earn Asia Miles from your credit card spend in Australia.

As a non-Amex option, the ANZ Rewards Black is pretty good – although you’ll only earn points on the full earn rate up to the first $5,000 spent each month.

The HSBC Premier card is another good earner, but it’s only available to HSBC customers with Premier status.

Australia’s best business cards for Asia Miles

There are also a range of business credit cards in Australia that earn points which are transferrable to Cathay Asia Miles. These are the top earners:

Card	Loyalty program	Annual fee	Asia Miles earned per $1	More information
Amex Platinum Business	Amex Membership Rewards (Ascent Premium)	$1,750	1.125
Amex Business Explorer	Amex Membership Rewards	$149	1
Amex Gold Business	Amex Membership Rewards	$395	0.75

All of these American Express business cards earn uncapped points.

If you’d prefer a non-Amex option, the ANZ Business Black card earns the equivalent of 0.5 Asia Miles per dollar spent up to $10,000 per month.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.