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American Express Membership Rewards Points are one of my favourite types of points/miles – largely due to their flexibility. Being able to transfer to a wide range of different hotel and airline partners is great, but knowing how long each of those transfers actually takes in practice is also important, particularly for booking airline award space that can get snapped up very quickly. I’ve therefore been running some experiments to see what the transfer times to Amex’s various partners really are. I looked at British Airways Avios first, then Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and now it’s time move on to Delta – so if you’re wondering how long it takes to transfer American Express Membership Rewards Points to Delta SkyMiles, you’ve come to the right place!

How long does it take to transfer American Express Membership Rewards Points to Delta SkyMiles?

The official line on the Amex site states an “estimated transfer time” of “usually 30 minutes”.

To get a range of real data points, I made a number of transfers on different days of the week. I was pleased to see that the transfers were completed more or less instantly (same as with Virgin Atlantic Flying Club) – all I had to do was make sure I was logged out of my Delta account and then log back in to see the updated balance.

If you have any issues making the transfer online, don’t waste your time trying to sort it out yourself (the Amex Membership Rewards site isn’t great) – just give Amex a ring and they will resolve it straight away.

It’s important to note that these results are currently based on a relatively small number of data points. Please share your own transfer times (including the day/time you made the transfer) in the comments and I will use the info to produce a more reliable average and range.