Published: 28 September 2026
HSBC Premier Reward Points: What Are They Worth & How to Use Them?
If you have an HSBC Premier Credit Card, your everyday spending earns HSBC Premier Reward Points which can be converted into airline miles, hotel points, shopping vouchers or charity donations.
Like American Express Membership Rewards, the advantage is flexibility. Instead of earning directly into one airline programme, you can keep your points with HSBC until you decide how you want to use them – and HSBC occasionally offers transfer bonuses which can make converting them into airline miles considerably more attractive.
But how much are HSBC Reward Points actually worth?
We’ve investigated the different ways of spending them, looked at which airline and hotel transfers offer the best value, and compared the earning rates of HSBC’s two Premier credit cards with that of American Express Membership Rewards.
How do I earn HSBC Reward Points?
HSBC Reward Points are the currency of the two HSBC Premier Credit Cards. These cards are only available to HSBC Premier bank account holders and offer points based on spend, with higher points earning in other currencies.
How many HSBC Reward Points do I earn on each card?
HSBC Premier has two credit cards, these are only available to people with a HSBC Premier Bank account.
The first card has no fee but earns a lower number of points per £ spent. The other is currently £290 per year and comes with a variety of other benefits including a free Priority Pass and free airport fast-track (list of airports here), as well as earning double the number of points.
HSBC Premier Credit Card (free)
- 1.5 reward points per £ spent in sterling
- 2 reward points per £ spent in foreign currencies
HSBC Premier Would Elite Mastercard (£290 a year)
- 3 reward points per £ spent in sterling
- 4 reward points per £ spent in foreign currencies
- Free Priority Pass and free airport fast-track
On both cards, a 2.99% non-sterling transaction fee applies to foreign currency spend.
What can I do with my HSBC Reward Points?
Points can be transferred into a variety of airline and hotel programmes including Avios via British Airways and Qatar Airways.
Airlines
- Air France KLM Flying Blue
- Air India Maharaja Club
- British Airways Club
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
Hotels
- IHG One Rewards
- Wyndham Rewards
All points convert at the rate of 2 HSBC Reward Points to 1 Airline mile/Hotel point.
Other
Alternatively you can convert rewards points to shopping vouchers at a rate of 1,500 per £5 voucher. Retailers include Amazon and M&S.
In addition, you can make a donation to charity. Shelter will receive £5 for every 1,500 HSBC Reward points donated.
Watch Out: HSBC Reward Points Expire
Points can only be redeemed for three years from the end of the calendar month in which they were earned, after which they expire.
Collectors need to be careful here as it is not a matter of simply keeping your account active, you cannot risk letting your points go unused for more than 3 years.
HSBC Reward Points Transfer Bonuses
HSBC regularly runs bonuses when converting reward points into certain schemes. Each year since 2021, there has been at least one bonus a year of either 20% or 25% when converting to British Airways Club Avios.
In recent years there have also been bonuses for transferring to Air France KLM Flying Blue, Etihad Guest, Qantas Frequent Flyer and Qatar Privilege Club.
I held a HSBC Premier card for a couple of years and usually cashed out in full whenever there was a British Airways Avios transfer bonus. However, one thing to note is that HSBC have traditionally been poor at communicating these offers to their own customers. Every time I converted my points to Avios, I only found out about the bonus running from reading a blog or seeing something on Flyer Talk.
How do HSBC Rewards Points compare with American Express Membership Rewards?
HSBC Reward Points and American Express Membership Rewards have different earning and redemption rates so you should not consider the points to have equal value. Also, American Express generally offers a flat 1 MR point per £ on general spending on their cards while the two HSBC credit cards earn a different number of HSBC points per £.
Another thing to note is that the transfer partners are different and that it is not possible to transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Air India, Etihad, IHG or Wyndham like you can with HSBC. On the other hand, Amex offers a number of airline partners that HSBC does not including Delta, Iberia, SAS and Virgin plus also Accor, Hilton, Marriott, Radisson, Eurostar and Nectar.
We have done the following analysis based on £100 of spend in sterling. We took the HSBC & Amex points earned and then calculated the number of airline miles or hotel points they would convert into:
Airline Miles, Hotel Points or Voucher Value Earned per £100 Spend
| Scheme | HSBC Premier Credit Card (free) | HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard (£290 annually) | American Express (most cards) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Points per £100 | 150 HSBC Rewards | 300 HSBC Rewards | 100 Amex Membership Rewards |
| Converts to |  | | |
| Airline miles | |||
| Air France KLM Flying Blue | 75 miles | 150 miles | 100 miles |
| Air India Maharaja Club | 75 points | 150 points | – |
| British Airways Club | 75 Avios | 150 Avios | 100 Avios |
| Cathay Pacific Asia Miles | 75 miles | 150 miles | 100 miles |
| Emirates Skywards | 75 miles | 150 miles | 50 miles |
| Etihad Guest | 75 miles | 150 miles | – |
| Qantas Frequent Flyer | 75 points | 150 points | 100 points |
| Qatar Airways Privilege Club | 75 Avios | 150 Avios | 100 Avios |
| Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer | 75 miles | 150 miles | 66 miles |
| Hotel Points | |||
| IHG One Rewards | 75 points | 150 points | – |
| Wyndham Rewards | 75 points | 150 points | – |
| Pseudo Cash | |||
| Retail vouchers (Amazon, M&S etc) | 50p | £1.00 | 50p |
| Charity | |||
| Shelter (charity donation) | 50p | £1.00 | – |
Commentary
If we forst compare the free HSBC Premier Credit Card with the (also free) American Express Rewards Credit Card – at 75 points per £100 spend, the rates for HSBC are generally poorer than with American Express, with the exception of transfers to Emirates Skywards and Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer.
However holders of the fee paying HSBC World Elite Mastercard, get significantly more airline miles/hotel points for their £100 spend than they would earn, even on American Express Platinum.
If you regard Amazon & M&S vouchers as effectively cash, a 0.5% return on spend for the free card is in line with American Express Membership Rewards conversion. The £290 HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard returns a 1% return on spend, although this extra is not enough to make this card worthwhile on its own, it is the additional travel benefits that make this more interesting.
One advantage HSBC has over American Express is card acceptance. Both HSBC Premier credit cards are Mastercards, so they’re accepted in some places that don’t take American Express. The difference in UK acceptance has narrowed considerably over the years, but it hasn’t disappeared completely.
This matters when comparing earning rates. An American Express card may offer a better return on paper, but you won’t earn any Membership Rewards points if the retailer doesn’t accept Amex. Having an HSBC Mastercard therefore gives you more opportunities to earn points from everyday spending – including, importantly for me, at Greggs!
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to transfer HSBC Premier Rewards?
Most transactions are instantaneous (and that was always my experience with transferring to BA and Flying Blue) although HSBC does not commit to an exact length of time.
What is the minimum number of HSBC Premier Rewards in a transfer?
There is no minimum, 2 HSBC Premier Rewards convert to 1 airline mile or hotel point.
Are there any other restrictions?
You can only convert your points into a maximum of 99,998 airline miles or hotel points in one transaction.
Our Take
HSBC Reward Points are one of the most useful flexible points currencies available to UK travellers, although their value depends considerably on which HSBC Premier credit card you hold.
The fee-free HSBC Premier Credit Card is relatively weak for everyday sterling spending, effectively earning 0.75 airline miles per £1 with most transfer partners. That’s generally below the 1 mile per £1 available from a typical Membership Rewards-earning American Express card. However, HSBC’s cards are backed by Mastercard and have wider acceptance, so the theoretical earning rate doesn’t tell the whole story – you can use them in shops where Amex isn’t accepted.
There are exceptions. HSBC has some useful partners that aren’t available through American Express Membership Rewards, including Etihad Guest, Air India Maharaja Club, IHG One Rewards and Wyndham Rewards. This makes HSBC particularly useful if you need to top up one of those accounts for a redemption.
The £290-a-year HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard is much more rewarding, earning 3 HSBC Reward Points – equivalent to 1.5 airline miles – for every £1 of sterling spending. That’s better than most Membership Rewards-earning American Express cards for airline transfers, and particularly attractive for Emirates Skywards and Singapore KrisFlyer because Amex uses less generous transfer ratios for those programmes.
We wouldn’t pay £290 purely for the increased points earning, though. Compared with taking retail vouchers, World Elite returns around 1% of your spending compared with 0.5% on the free HSBC Premier card. The additional 0.5% alone would require around £58,000 of annual spending to recover the annual fee. The case for World Elite therefore depends also on whether you’ll also make use of other benefits such as Priority Pass, airport Fast Track and any welcome bonus available when you apply.
Where HSBC can become particularly interesting is during a transfer bonus. Having previously held the Premier card myself, I have previously waited for Avios bonuses before transferring points rather than converting when needed. Given HSBC’s low key communication of some previous bonuses, we’d also keep an eye on frequent-flyer websites and forums rather than relying entirely on HSBC to tell you when one is running.
There is one important downside to leaving points sitting in HSBC indefinitely: they expire after three years. Unlike some loyalty programmes, simply continuing to use your account doesn’t extend their life.
For the free Premier card, we’d see HSBC Reward Points mainly as a useful flexible currency with some unusual transfer partners. World Elite is much more rewarding, but whether it’s worth £290 depends on the value you get from the whole package rather than the points alone.
