Stacking the UA TravelBank Credit From the IHG Business Card

The IHG Premier Business Credit Card comes with a somewhat odd perk. You receive $25 in United Airlines TravelBank credit twice a year, for a total of $50 in annual credits. But because they are given twice a year, 6 months apart, and each expire after 6 months, it can be hard to use in a meaningful way.

If you fly UA all the time, this is just an easy $25 twice a year. However, if you are an infrequent flyer on UA, one or both of these is likely going to expire each year, thanks to the expiration policy:

Each calendar year, the primary cardmember will receive one $25 United® TravelBank cash deposit in their United MileagePlus® account on or about January 1, and another $25 United® TravelBank cash deposit on or about July 1.

TravelBank Cash that is received as part of this benefit and deposited between January 1 and June 30 will expire on July 15 of the same calendar year, regardless of deposit date. Deposits made between July 1 and December 31 will expire on January 15 of the following calendar year, regardless of deposit date.

You’ll note, however, that there is a 15 day overlap from “around” July 1 to “around” July 15th each year. The way to save these credits is to take that overlap time to book a ~$50 flight, wait until the risk-free 24 hour cancellation period ends, and then cancel the ticket for a Future Flight Credit.

I’ll walk you through how I did this – although I had an extra $25 on hand from last year due to a delay in getting my first TravelBank credit after receiving the card due to a system glitch.

For me, with $75, I hunted for a fare that I expected could be around $75 one way. I figured a short route like LAX-LAS (or maybe LGA-DCA, etc) would do the trick and I nailed it with an LAS-LAX flight for $74.90.

At checkout, I applied my TravelBank funds.

As you can see I owed nothing, but banked $74.90 into a ticket.

I waited until two days later (so as to not cut it close) and cancelled it. Voila! I now have the full $75 banked to use towards a future ticket by Jan 7, 2024

This might not be a life changing travel hack, but instead of having to actually use two random $25 credits before they expire, you can “bank” them for a full year.

But the best part is that, in July, I’ll get another $25 credit which I can of course combine with my future flight credit. So in my case, I can book a free $100 flight (or save $100 on a flight) from July onwards as long as I fly by Jan 7th, 2024. The only hitch here (as pointed out to me by several members of our Facebook group) is you cannot combine a Future Flight Credit with a TravelBank credit, so you’d have to find a $25ish flight, do the same thing, and use both Future Flight Credits (which can be combined).

In a normal case, you’d have $50 from one of the overlapping period, book a $50 fare (or as close as you can), then do the same again 6 months later and then combine those future flight credits when you book a flight.

And that is how we take a lackluster benefit and use it a bit more advantageously 🙂

IHG Premier Business Credit Card

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