CommBank Awards, with the linked Standard, Gold, Platinum and Diamond accounts, is one of Australia’s most popular rewards programs when it comes to sheer bulk of members, but it is not the most appealing out there—with limited value to the avid frequent flyer point collector due to its poor earn rates.

However, in July 2018, the bank announced the addition of 10 additional frequent flyer partners (up from just two), increasing the value of the program—we delve into the changes below.

Note that CommBank has announced that they will discontinue the ability to use their Amex cards from 1 November 2018, with the last day to apply for an Amex card 31 August 2018.

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The basics of Commonwealth Bank Awards points

Rather than giving you points for a particular airline, Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has its own points scheme, Award Points, which you can then use in a number of different ways.

If airline points are what you are after, you can exchange your Award points for frequent flyer points but you can also use Awards Points to go shopping, buy gift cards or even pay your CBA bank fees.

Transferring to frequent flyer programs

You can exchange your Awards points for Qantas Points by opting into ‘Qantas Frequent Flyer Direct’, which will cost you $30 per year. Unfortunately, this is an ‘all or nothing’ deal, meaning that all of your Awards points will automatically be converted into Qantas Points each month, i.e. you won’t be able to use any of your Awards points on anything else.

If you opt-in to Qantas Frequent Flyer Direct, there is also a maximum number of points that you are allowed to earn each year. Check out the maximum for each card later on in this guide.

Whilst you will be locked in if you transfer your points to Qantas, they can be used for travel in Emirates Business Class

Unlike Qantas Points, you don’t have to exchange all of your Awards points for Velocity or any other program’s points, and there is no annual fee associated with making any of these exchanges.

The exchange rates are different for each partner:

You will need a minimum of 3,600 Awards points to make your first exchange to Velocity points, and every subsequent exchange needs to be of a minimum of 1,000 Awards points. For all other programs, you’ll need to exchange at least 2,500 Awards points.

Compared to other banks’ programs, these transfer rates are quite poor. However, if you do have a chunk of CommBank Awards points, the most appealing would be:

• Qantas: for travel on Qantas, Emirates and oneworld partner airlines
• Velocity: for travel on Virgin Australia and partners such as Singapore Airlines and Etihad
• Air France-KLM Flying Blue: for travel on SkyTeam airlines such as China Airlines, Delta and Korean Air
• EVA Air Infinity MileageLands & United MileagePlus: for travel on Star Alliance airlines such as United, ANA and THAI

Korean Air generally has excellent award availability—and even sliding doors in its Boeing 747-8i First Class!

Gift cards

You can also exchange your award points for gift cards. Let’s be honest—gift cards are the next best thing to cold hard cash, and if you’re not an airline points person, then chances are this is the best way to spend your Awards points.

Gift cards range from $25-$500 and, surprisingly, you don’t need to get the largest gift card to get the best exchange rate for your points.

Although all the gift cards cost the same regardless of which retailer they are for, each retailer only offers certain values. There are currently 21 different retailers and the gift cards they’re offerings can be seen in the table below:

Value of gift cards available

Purchasing with points: Awards Store

Awards points can also be used directly for shopping. The Awards store has a whole range of items you can buy including clothing, electronics, beauty products, homewares, movie tickets and wine.

Some items also offer you the ‘Points Plus Pay’ option, which means you can choose to pay using a combination of Award points and cash. This works on a sliding scale, so you can tailor it to fit the number of points you have at any one time.

Pay with points at Myer and Flight Centre

An interesting facility that CBA offers is the ability to pay using your Awards points. At the moment, it’s only for Myer and Flight Centre, but if it gains traction we can probably expect to see this option rolled out to more retailers.

The way it works is by presenting your credit card in-store and telling them that you’d like to use your points rather than your actual money. You can also use your points online and over the phone with Flight Centre.

The Awards exchange rate at both Myer and Flight Centre is $200 points per $1 (the same as for gift cards above $100, see Gift Cards). At Myer, you need to be spending at least 200 points ($1) to use this function, but at Flight Centre, the minimum is 2,500 points.

One thing to note: if you are a Myer One member you will be able to claim credits on your Myer One card on purchases you make using Awards points but you can’t use Awards points to pay off any money you owe in a Myer credit account or on layby.

Paying off banking fees

Finally, you can also use your Awards points to pay off certain CBA banking fees, such as your credit card’s annual fee or repayments under an insurance policy you hold with CBA.

For all of these CBA fees, you will get the same rate of 200 points per $1. This means that it is not the most effective use of Awards points but it does give you the option of offsetting some of the costs of holding the card.

Earning points

There are four cards options offered under the CommBank Awards program and they will each give you two physical cards, one Mastercard and one American Express but two cards doesn’t mean two accounts. Both of these cards are attached to the one account but they will each offer you different Awards points rates depending on which one you use to make purchases.

This table shows you an overview of points earning on each card, under each card type. More details of each card type can be found below.

Awards Card (Basic)

This is the most basic option, offering the lowest Awards points earn rate, but also having the lowest annual fee.

Gold Awards Card

This intermediate card offers you a slightly better Awards points rate as well as additional insurances.

Platinum Awards Card

This premium card offers a higher Awards points rate and access to CommBank’s concierge service.

Diamond Awards Card

This premier card offers the highest Awards points rate, maximum points cap and also comes with complimentary airport lounge access, but all at the cost of a higher annual fee.

Summing up

There are a number of ways to use CommBank Awards points if you have a stash in your Awards points account.

One of the more commons ways we hear of CBA cardholders using the Diamond card is through discounted annual fee offers as a result of a home loan package. If this is on offer to you, then the Diamond card could be worth considering.

Their partnership with both Qantas and Velocity—as well as other frequent flyer programs—makes those programs an attractive option but their Qantas Frequent Flyer Direct requirements are restrictive and stop you from making use of any of their other redemption options.

Relative to the competition though, points earn and redemption rates on Commonwealth Bank Awards-linked credit cards are poor, with greater value to be had by looking elsewhere.

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