Pay Yourself Back for any travel expense with the Aeroplan® Card

For travelers who want an easy way to redeem points for travel expenses that are traditionally hard to cover with points — like Airbnbs, Disney tickets, rental cars and more — one of the very best options is one that flies under most people’s radar — the Aeroplan® Credit Card.

Even better: you can pair a  Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve®, or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card with an Aeroplan® Credit Card to stretch your points further.

During some promotions, you can stack card benefits to use 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points to cover a travel expense of up to $812. Here are all the details.

What is Aeroplan?

Aeroplan is the loyalty program of Air Canada. You can use Aeroplan points to book flights with Air Canada or with any of their airline partners (subject to availability). It is a program that we have featured in many of our guides to booking flights to specific destinations. One of the perks of the program is the ability to add a stopover for 5,000 points.

While there are some intermediate to advanced ways to use Aeroplan points to get a lot of hypothetical value from your points, there are also ways to use Aeroplan points to cover any travel expense — if you have the right credit card. You must have the Aeroplan® Credit Card is issued by Chase to be able to use Aeroplan points this way.

Aeroplan Credit Card Overview

The Aeroplan® Credit Card is issued by Chase. It earns Aeroplan points and has some benefits specific to travel with Air Canada. This includes benefits like cardmembers and up to travel companions (up to eight) on the same reservation can all get one free checked bag (up to 50 lbs) on Air Canada flights. You can also get preferred pricing for flight award redemptions.

But even for someone that never intends to fly on Air Canada it can provide a lot of value!

One of those benefits is the statement credit of up to $120 (every 4 years) for Trusted Traveler programs including TSA Precheck, Global Entry, or NEXUS.

But the biggest benefit for the average traveler is this ability to use the points to pay yourself back for any travel expense.

Pay Yourself Back – through December 31, 2025

Points earned with an Aeroplan® Credit Card have a unique redemption option. This is currently available through December 31, 2025. But it’s worth noting that this benefit has previously been extended twice already.

You can use your points to “Pay Yourself Back” for any expenses you have put on your Aeroplan card that code as travel expenses.

New in 2025: On January 1, 2025, this card added a restriction that you can redeem a maximum of 200,000 Aeroplan points this way per calendar year for travel expenses.

Note that other categories are available for Pay Yourself Back but at a lower rate. 

Your points are worth 1.25 cents per point for travel expenses. So if you have 10,000 points, you can can offset $125 of travel.

This is a benefit I’d love to see on the Chase Sapphire Preferred! With a Sapphire Preferred you can only use your points for general travel expenses when booking through Chase Travel℠. But Chase Travel℠ is sometimes more expensive than booking a rental car, flight, or hotel directly. And doesn’t give you the option to book an Airbnb and cover it with points.

But if you make a travel purchase with your Aeroplan card, you can offset it with your points within 90 days of the purchase. You can offset a full purchase or just part of it. Here’s the fine print on the Pay Yourself Back options.

And since the Aeroplan Credit Card has robust travel protections including trip delay, trip cancellation, baggage delay, and more — you can feel confident booking trips with it.

Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back Example

I decided to use my Aeroplan points to pay myself back for part of our campervan rental in Iceland. Here’s how the process works.

I logged into Chase.com and navigated to the rewards details on my Aeroplan Credit Card.

I had 80,457 points available to use.

After selecting “Pay Yourself Back” at the top menu, I could see the travel purchases I had made. I entered that I wanted to receive $1000.05 in statement credit value and used 80,004 to do so.

I got a confirmation screen that confirmed that my points had been deducted and I would see a statement credit in the next few days.

10% Bonus for Transferring Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan

Using Pay Yourself Back with points you earned directly on an Aeroplan card is fairly straightforward — but with a few steps you can actually use Ultimate Rewards points in the same way.

You’ll need an Aeroplan Credit Card as well as one of the Chase cards that has the ability to transfer points to airline partners: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve®, or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card. If you’re following my Three Year Plan, you should have at least one of these.

The value actually increases when you transfer Ultimate Rewards points over!

If you hold an Aeroplan Credit Card, you’ll get a 10% bonus on Ultimate Rewards points transfers to Air Canada Aeroplan when you transfer 50,000 points or more in a single transaction. This is one of the listed card benefits. There is a maximum of 25,000 Aeroplan bonus points in a calendar year.

You’ll need to be transferring from a card in your name — so I would need to transfer from my Sapphire card to my Aeroplan account and also be the one holding the Aeroplan card. Make sure you take this into account. If you only have one Sapphire account in your household, the same person would need to be the one with the Aeroplan card.

This means if I transfer 50,000 Ultimate Rewards, I will actually end up with 55,000 Aeroplan points. You don’t need to transfer in increments of 50,000 points to get the 10% bonus. Any number over 50,000 points will give you a 10% bonus (up to 25,000 bonus per year).

Restriction: Only points transferred from Ultimate Rewards to Pay Yourself Back

Once you have your Ultimate Rewards transferred over to Aeroplan, you can use these to Pay Yourself Back for any travel expenses that you’ve paid in the past 90 days with your Aeroplan Card.

In fact, the terms on the Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back page specify that this option is available for points transferred in from Ultimate Rewards.

If I had transferred 50,000 Ultimate Rewards, they would now be 55,000 Aeroplan points. I could use them to pay myself back for $687 of travel.

Even though other points currencies transfer to Aeroplan like American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Miles, and Bilt Rewards — you cannot use points transferred from these programs to Pay Yourself Back.

20% More: Stack with Transfer Bonuses

Occasionally, Chase also runs transfer bonuses that would give you even more points. We saw these pop up three times in 2024. Each gave a 20% bonus when you transferred Ultimate Rewards points to Aeroplan. Here’s an example of how it looks when you’re looking at your Ultimate Rewards points.

While this was a limited time offer, we do see these promotional transfer bonuses regularly from Chase points to Aeroplan. In 2024, we saw it come up three times.

Don’t want to miss a transfer bonus? Sign up here for alerts. 

This means that if you transferred 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Aeroplan, you’ll actually end up with 60,000 Aeroplan points.

Max Value: Adding it all together to stretch your points

If you’re able to use both the Aeroplan card bonus (of 10% if you transfer 50,000 points) and a limited time transfer bonus (of 20%), you’ll actually be able to get 1.65 cents per point.

What I love about this option is that it gives you total freedom in using your points for travel expenses — and at a higher rate than anywhere I’ve seen.

If you transfer 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Aeroplan during a transfer bonus (while you hold an Aeroplan Card), you’ll have a total of 65,000 points. You got 5,000 bonus points (10% for your benefit on the Aeroplan card) and 10,000 bonus points (20%) for the limited time transfer bonus.

Then Pay Yourself Back gives you 1.25 cents per point — so you’ll get to redeem that 65,000 for $812.

Keep in mind you have to put $812 of expenses that code as travel onto your Aeroplan Card. And you have 90 days from purchase to later Pay Yourself Back.

Best ways to use Pay Yourself Back

Since you can use Pay Yourself Back on the Aeroplan card for any travel expense, the options are unlimited. But here are a few use cases that I think are especially worthwhile.

Book Hyatt all-inclusive hotels (or any hotel)

Our family is a big fan of the Hyatt Ziva Cancun. We’ve been 5 times. But it has gotten increasingly harder to book with points. We like to go in January and current rates would cost 58,000 points per night for 2 adults and then we’d have to pay an additional $250 per night to add our kids to our room. That’s 174,000 points + $750 for a 3 night vacation and admittedly out of what we’re willing to pay.

But if I booked a room for 2 adults and 2 kids on the Hyatt website directly, I could pay with my Aeroplan card. A three night stay in January costs $2463 for 2 adults and 2 kids.

I earn 2463 Aeroplan points on this purchase (1 point per dollar).

I’d also earn 12,315 Hyatt points — because when you pay for a Hyatt reservation with cash, you earn 5 points per dollar.

I’d also earn 3 elite night credits with Hyatt (if you’re tracking to earn status). When you book through Chase Travel℠ you don’t earn elite night credits or Hyatt points.

If I then transfer 174,000 Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan, I’d end up with 191,400 Aeroplan points (with the 10% bonus).

This will be worth $2392 with Pay Yourself Back.

I would use the same points but didn’t have to pay $750 out of pocket for the kids and I would earn over 12,000 Hyatt points.

This same idea can work for other Hyatt hotels, or any hotels! If I’m transferring points during a 20% transfer bonus, I’d have to transfer even fewer points.

Cover Disney tickets (or Disney resorts)

I get so many questions from families trying to cut down on Disney expenses. We used the Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back feature to cover our Disneyland tickets in 2025.

Important! When you book Disney tickets, they won’t code as travel unless you buy them through a travel agent like Undercover Tourist.

When I logged into my Aeroplan Credit Card account on December 11, 2024, I could see that I had 33 more days to use points to pay myself back for the Disney tickets.

I used 116,742 points to fully cover the $1459 expense. I had transferred these points from Ultimate Rewards so really I only had to transfer 90,000 points to cover this expense since I transferred during a bonus. My 90,000 points earned a 10% relationship bonus plus a 20% transfer bonus!

Without using this Pay Yourself Back trick, to cover Disney tickets, you could only cash out your Ultimate Rewards at 1 cent per point. So 50,000 points would get you $500 cash back.

With this trick, those 50,000 points are worth over $678! Or — if you transfer during a bonus period, $812!

Pay for an Airbnb

While there are some ways to book vacation rentals with points — like booking Vacasa — the locations that have Vacasa rentals are somewhat limited.

You can book an Airbnb and pay for it with your Aeroplan card — and then use points to offset the costs.

Rental cars and Campervans

Finding the best price on rental cars can often meaning booking on CostcoTravel or other websites.

When we rented a campervan in Iceland, we had to book directly through the company.

Both are times when you could book with an Aeroplan card and later Pay Yourself Back.

Cruises

Cruises are notoriously hard to cover with points! This is one of the best options out there and gives you the flexibility to book the cheapest rate you can find for that cruise. Even a Disney cruise!

Important Tips

If you want to utilize this redemption option keep in mind these logistical tips.

1) If you already have a Sapphire Preferred card, you’ll need an Aeroplan card to get this Pay Yourself Back option. The Aeroplan card will add to your 5/24 status.

2) Promotional transfer bonuses are limited time offers but we seem to see them at least once a year. In 2024, we saw them three times.

3) You have 90 days from the time you make your travel purchase to use the Pay Yourself Back feature.