What Is A Hybrid Travel Rewards Credit Card?

Proprietary and Hybrid Travel Credit Cards

First Published Date: March 27, 2016

Travel rewards credit cards can help you travel faster and possibly also earn you free or partially free trips due to the generous returns they offer on daily spending. In general there are usually two ways these credit cards accumulate travel rewards points. These are proprietary rewards points and hotel or airline rewards points. However, there is another type of credit card that offers the best of both by providing more options called a hybrid travel credit card. Today I will talk about this new breed of increasingly popular credit cards called hybrid cards.

Proprietary rewards creit cards are tied to credit card companies’ own rewards points. For each dollar you spend, you usually collect one or two rewards points that offer usually a 1-cent value per point. For example, if you spend $100, you will get 100 points (if one point is being offered for each dollar) or $1 (100 cents). These accumulated points can be used against your credit card travel purchases and that’s how these proprietary points work. So what you see is what you get when it comes to proprietary points. For example, your return on your credit card purchases will be based on how many points the cards offer and you cannot exceed that rate of return. If you get 1 point per dollar, your return is 1 percent. If you get 4 points per dollar, your return will be 4 percent (if 1 point is valued at 1 cent).

The Airline or Hotel credit cards offer hotel or airline points, instead of proprietary points. The beauty of these points is that since there is no fixed amount attached, the rate of return can be an astounding 5-7 percent, if you are knowledgeable about the hotel or airline rewards programs and know how to redeem to maximize return.

Now, what if you want neither proprietary points nor airline/hotel points, but want it all? That’s where the hybrid credit cards come in. Hybrid travel credit cards give you the option and flexibility to redeem points as proprietary points or you can transfer them to other hotel or airline rewards points. So hybrid cards work for both consumers who want straightforward proprietary points with fixed return or for those who are knowledgeable about the ins and outs of hotel/airline rewards programs and want to maximize returns by converting points to hotel/airline rewards programs.

Two popular hybrid cards in Canada are American Express Gold Rewards Card and RBC Visa Infinite Avion Card. As consumers are looking for more options, expect more entrances of hybrid travel credit cards on the market in the future.