US Bank finally has transfer partners, on a card you can no longer apply for

For years US Bank ran a rewards program with no way out. Points were worth 1.5 cents each toward travel through the bank's own portal and that was the ceiling: no airline partners, no hotel partners, no transfers. In August 2026 that changed, and the rollout was messy enough to be worth documenting properly.

Four independent write-ups agree on the partner list and the ratios.

The partners

Four airlines at 1:1 and one hotel program at 2:1. Accor at 2:1 is the weak link and it is meant to be: Accor points have a fixed cash value, so a 2:1 transfer is close to a straight cash-out, and it is very hard to do better with it than the 1.5 cents the portal already gives.

The airline side is where this gets interesting. Flying Blue runs monthly Promo Rewards at genuine discounts, and Avianca LifeMiles has no fuel surcharges on Star Alliance partners, which is the classic reason people hold it. Ethiopian ShebaMiles is the unusual one, and unusual is where sweet spots live: it is a Star Alliance program that most people have never had a way to feed.

The rollout was not clean, and the timeline matters

Doctor of Credit dates each step, and if you tried to transfer in the last three weeks and found a partner missing, this is why:

US Bank has indicated that some partners went live earlier than intended, which is a reasonable explanation for partners appearing and vanishing inside a week. FrequentMiler also notes the Accor ratio was briefly displayed at 1:1 before reverting to 2:1. Nobody should assume today's list is final in either direction.

The catch, and it is a large one

Only one card can transfer: the US Bank Altitude Reserve Visa Infinite. And that card has been closed to new applicants for a considerable time. Three of the four sources state this plainly; The Points Guy puts it as the Altitude Reserve not being currently open to new applicants and not having been "for quite some time".

So the first transferable-points program from a major US issuer in years launched on a product nobody new can get. Existing cardholders got a real and overdue upgrade to a stash of points that previously had one exit. Everybody else got an announcement.

FrequentMiler notes some readers have reported being able to transfer from older FlexPerks Travel Rewards cards. That is reader-reported rather than confirmed by the bank, so treat it as unverified.

We are correcting our own record

Our catalog lists the US Bank Altitude Reserve with an apply link. On the evidence of three independent sources, it should not be presented as a card you can apply for, and a discontinued card shown as a live option is the most damaging kind of error a site like this can make.

We have flagged the record accordingly, and we are doing the same for the Axis Vistara Signature: CardInsider reports the banks have stopped issuing the Vistara cards after the Air India merger, and BankBazaar states that Axis Bank's own card page confirms sourcing has been discontinued. Both cards stay on the site with their pages intact, because holders still need the information; both are now marked as no longer open to new applicants and are excluded from our rankings.

What to do

If you hold an Altitude Reserve, your points are worth substantially more than they were in July and you should look at Flying Blue Promo Rewards and LifeMiles before defaulting to the 1.5-cent portal redemption. Transfers are found in the rewards portal under the loyalty transfer option after selecting the card.

If you do not hold one, this is a good moment to be honest that there is nothing here to chase. Our transfer partners page shows which cards in the catalog actually have live transfer routes, and the points calculator compares a transfer against a straight cash-out.