Do credit card reward points expire?
Updated 30 September 2026
Usually yes. Where an expiry is published in our database, 24 months is the most common, followed by 36 months. A smaller group publish no expiry at all. The problem is not the rule, it is that a majority of programmes do not state one clearly in the terms we can read.
What the published terms say
The table below is every published expiry value across our live offers, counted as it stands in the terms today. Anything shown as not stated is an offer whose terms we read without finding an expiry rule. Not applicable means the offer pays no points at all, so no expiry applies to it.
| Published expiry | Offers |
|---|---|
| Not applicable | 7,337 |
| 24.0 | 321 |
| 24 | 225 |
| Never expires | 223 |
| 36 | 137 |
| 36.0 | 110 |
| 24 months | 35 |
| 12.0 | 33 |
| 3 years | 27 |
| 6.0 | 21 |
| Lifetime | 15 |
| 36 months | 5 |
| Other, each under 5 offers | 4 |
| Not stated | 2,944 |
| Total live offers | 11,437 |
The clock usually starts at earning, not at year end
Where a programme publishes 24 months, that is normally measured from when each point was credited, not from a financial year. Points therefore expire continuously in small batches rather than all at once, which is why people discover the loss at redemption rather than at the deadline.
Closing a card usually forfeits the balance
Most published terms treat unredeemed points as forfeited when the account closes, often immediately. If you are closing a card, redeem first and close second. The same applies when a card is upgraded or downgraded, where the terms sometimes move the points and sometimes do not.
What to do about it
Check the expiry rule for your own programme once, write down the month your oldest points fall due, and redeem before then rather than saving for a redemption that may never come. Points are a depreciating asset with a published shelf life, and treating them as savings is the common mistake.
Figures on this page are computed from AskTula's offer database, 11,437 live offers read from published terms across 593 cards and 47 issuers, as read on 30 September 2026. They describe what issuers, merchants and card networks publish, not what any individual card will pay you.