U.S. Bank said transfer partners were coming in December 2025. On December 14 the rewards page said "coming soon." Then nothing, for eight months, and eventually even the "coming soon" line disappeared. Most people who follow this stuff, us included, assumed the project had been quietly killed.
It was not. As of August 11, 2026, Altitude points now transfer to airline and hotel partners.
Update, August 31, 2026: the roster has not sat still. U.S. Bank pulled Qantas on August 12, one day after launch (Flying Blue vanished the same day and was back by August 17), restored Qantas on August 27, and added Avianca LifeMiles on August 29. Five partners today. The table and alliance notes below match the current roster, and the launch set is noted where it differs.
The partners
| Partner | Ratio | Alliance |
|---|---|---|
| Air France-KLM Flying Blue | 1:1 | SkyTeam |
| Qantas Frequent Flyer (pulled August 12, 2026, restored August 27) | 1:1 | Oneworld |
| Ethiopian ShebaMiles | 1:1 | Star Alliance |
| Avianca LifeMiles (added August 29, 2026) | 1:1 | Star Alliance |
| ALL Accor Live Limitless | 2:1 | Hotel |
Please note to read the Accor line carefully. It is two U.S. Bank points for one Accor point, not the other way round.
Five partners is still a small roster, but the four airlines now cover all three major alliances - SkyTeam through Flying Blue, Oneworld through Qantas, and Star Alliance through both Ethiopian and Avianca LifeMiles. Flying Blue is the one most people will actually use. Ethiopian is the surprise: no other U.S. transferable currency partners with ShebaMiles, so this is the only way to reach that program from a credit card in the States.
The catch, and it is a very large one
Only the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Visa Infinite can transfer. Not the Altitude Connect, not the Altitude Go, not the business cards. Those still earn Altitude points and those points still have no transfer path. This is rather disappointing as no other transferable currency is restricted this much.
The Altitude Reserve has been closed to new applicants since November 2024. So U.S. Bank has launched a transferable currency that nobody new can start earning, on a card some people cancelled while waiting for exactly this feature. We at PointBagel are wondering what the real play is here. Maybe they are using the remaining members of this card to beta-test the transfers - while planning for a secondary launch later once they work out all of the kinks to the entire card lineup.
How to actually do it
Log in, open the Altitude Reserve, go to Rewards, then the Rewards Center. Look for a button labelled "Rewards your way with loyalty rewards transfer." It hands you off to a U.S. Bank-branded version of Points.com, where you link the loyalty account and move the points.
Timing is in the Altitude Reserve program rules, and it is worth reading before you click. Points leave your U.S. Bank account immediately. Most requests are processed by the next business day, but the rules allow up to 72 hours for the miles to appear on the other side, and they state that every transfer is final and irrevocable once submitted. If nothing has posted, you have six months to raise the issue with U.S. Bank.
One more thing buried in the same section: the name on your U.S. Bank account has to match the name on the loyalty account, and the rules warn that even minor variations can cause the transfer to fail. Worth checking before you move a large balance.
What the points are worth now
Before this, Altitude points had one exit: Real-Time Rewards at 1.0 cent, cut from 1.5 cents in December 2025 - probably in preparation for using the points to transfer to partners (since that is when their transfer program was supposed to go live). A fixed-value currency with no transfer path is worth exactly its cash-out rate, and that is how we valued it.
That floor has not moved. What changed is that there is now a ceiling above it. A 1:1 route into Flying Blue is a genuinely good option, and our valuation rose accordingly when we recomputed Altitude points from their transfer partners the same way we compute every other transferable currency. The current figures are on the programs page.
Two things keep that number honest rather than exciting. The Accor route at 2:1 isn't great, since it halves every point on the way in. And five partners is still thin next to the big transferable currencies, so there is less routing flexibility than those balances buy you.
What we do not know yet
Ethiopian is the open question. ShebaMiles has two calculators: one for its own flights and one for Star Alliance partners. The own-metal one gives you real numbers (Washington Dulles to Addis is 152,000 miles round trip in business, so 76,000 each way) but the site calls it "a guide only" and says the real price is quoted at booking. The partner chart is considerably worse and, unhelpfully, never says whether its numbers are one way or round trip. The taxes and carrier charges on Ethiopian-issued awards are not well documented either. We have valued it on the cautious side until we do a much deeper dive on their miles and how easily one can use them.
Worth knowing before you move anything: ShebaMiles are valid three years from the year you earned them, and Ethiopian clears out expired miles every December 31. Activity in the year they are due to expire pushes them out another calendar year, but redeeming does not count. The terms specifically exclude award tickets and mile redeposits from that extension, so spending some of your balance will not protect the rest of it. Either way this is a deadline, not the open-ended balance you are used to from a bank program.
We track the five live routes, the ratios and Ethiopian's award chart in the catalog, with every roster change recorded as a dated entry, and we will revisit the Ethiopian numbers after we do more extensive research on their miles.
