Somehow US Bank launches a program with four transfer partners and then immediately decides to remove two of them. Weird!

After much teasing, US Bank finally launches a new transferrable points currency

Time travel back to 2025 for a moment. US Bank heavily teased introducing a new transferrable points currency in August 2025. In fact, they teased it so much, the company even committed to it for their Altitude Rewards credit card. Who doesn’t like a new program that could lead to increasing the value of points for US Bank?

But then, US Bank went through much retraction. The company started reducing the value of points for Altitude Rewards, the credit card lost features on its travel credit, and all references to the transferrable currency was scrubbed from its website. Less than a year later, it seemed like all hope of a new points currency would be forever quietly gone.

You know the old saying that the night is always darkest before the dawn.

In August 2026, US Bank launches a set of partners for the launch of its new transferrable points currency (all 1:1 except as noted):

• Air France KLM Flying Blue
• ALL Accor Live Limitless (2:1)
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Ethiopian ShebaMiles

The most appealing part of the Altitude Rewards card is the ability to earn 3x points on mobile wallet purchases, on up to $5,000 in purchases per billing cycle. Yes, this even includes Costco, making it one of the best credit cards to use there.

But then two airline programs were removed just after launch

Transfers are only available for those with the not-currently-obtainable Altitude Rewards card. Yes, you heard that right, there is a launch of transfer partners for a card you cannot apply for and cannot product change into.

The oddities for US Bank don’t just end with launching a program for a card you cannot get. Almost immediately after launch, US Bank cut its new list of partners in half. Both Air France KLM Flying Blue and Qantas Frequent Flyer were removed from the list of transfers.

That leaves just ALL and Ethiopian as the only current transfer partners. How very US Bank of this whole launch process. Announce a product, then hide the announcement, ultimately launch it on a product no one can get who doesn’t already have it, then remove partners right after launch.

It sure does seem like the announcement for those two partners came earlier than intended and they will be back at some point. But this is US Bank we’re talking about…

It’s actually not a bad deal with just the two partners they have

So, the program currently has two transfer partners. Should you actually care about them?

ALL Accor Live Limitless

Points transfer from US Bank Altitude Rewards to ALL at a 2:1 ratio. Thus, every 1,000 points you transfer become 500 ALL points. At face value, that might not sound good, but recall that ALL points are worth a fixed $0.023 each.

Doing some simple math, you would get about $11.50 of value from every 1,000 Altitude Rewards points used towards ALL. That means you’ll get 1.15 cents of value from each Altitude Rewards point.

This is actually higher than any other redemption possibility you might have with the card. You used to get 1.5 cents of value towards travel when you offset travel charges, but it has since been reduced to 1 cent each point. That’s the same rate you get when moving the points to your US Bank checking/savings account.

So, already, just having ALL available raises the ceiling of the points.

Ethiopian ShebaMiles

We have to admit that we haven’t yet done a full deep dive of this program because no other US-based bank program partners with Ethiopian.

However, there are reports of cheap redemptions with the program, including just 15,000 miles for business class on the route from Bangkok to Hong Kong. The author of that linked article also mentions being able to get a lie-flat seat between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for the same price is a good deal. I’d say it’s not really worth it. The flight is so short that it has to be nearly impossible to enjoy the lie-flat seat for more than just a couple of minutes.

Still, there are some options for intra-Africa or flights just getting you to Africa from Europe or Asia. The rates and the product aren’t too aspirational from what we can tell, but it unlocks flight options you otherwise wouldn’t have. And not many people would have their miles, making competition less intense. That said, Ethiopian is part of Star Alliance, so it might be worth checking other programs (United, Air Canada) for a better rate.

We hope to do a deeper dive into this program at some point.

How do you feel about the US Bank transfer partners announcement now that it finally happened?