CIBC has a new redemption promotion in place for holders of their CIBC Aventura Cards. This offer provides a 50% discount in the number of points required when you utilized their Shopping with Points redemption for any travel that you book on your Aventura card. That's right - you don't have to book travel via CIBC Rewards, you can go out to any travel provider - airline, hotel, car rental and so on book directly with them and then redeem your CIBC Rewards points against that charge.
How many points do I need and what is the value in this redemption
CIBC Rewards Shopping with Points typically requires 16,000 points for every $100 you would like to pay off on the pending transaction. With this promotion that drops by 50% to 8,000 points for a $100 credit.
8,000 points for $100 means you are receiving1.25 cents per point in value - that's not a bad deal for being able to book your own travel. Yes, you can get up to 2% booking with CIBC Rewards travel but that's if you max out the ticket price and you are limited to booking with CIBC Rewards. But it does have me wonder if bookings via CIBC Rewards counts as a travel purchase - so that once the taxes and fees post you can do your Shopping with Points redemption to get the 1.25 cents per point against those fees instead of 1 cent per point at the time of booking with CIBC Rewards.
That 1.25 cents per point in value means translates into the following returns on your spending:
- CIBC Aventura® Visa Infinite* Card: 1.25% to 2.5%
- CIBC Aventura® Visa Infinite* Privilege Card: 1.56% to 3.75%
- CIBC Aventura® Gold Visa* Card: 1.25% to 2.5%
- CIBC Aventura® Visa* Card: 0.625% to 1.25%
Must redeem while the transaction is pending!
There
is one key point you need to be aware of with CIBC Shopping with Points
and that is you can only redeem while the transaction is pending! So
literally from the time you purchase
to maybe 2 days after the purchase at most! Once the transaction posts
to your account you cannot get this deal.That is why it is called
Shopping with Points as CIBC considers this an instant or almost instant
redemption at the time of purchase. Here are the directions from CIBC:
How do I use Shopping with Points to redeem on travel?
- Book travel any way you like on your CIBC Aventura card.
- Sign on to CIBC Mobile Banking® or CIBC Online Banking® and find your recent travel purchase under pending transactions within your transaction history. If the pending transaction has not yet appeared, please continue to check back as it can take a few days. Please note: Foreign currency transactions, including those in USD, are not eligible to be redeemed through Shopping with Points.2
- Select the travel purchase within your pending transactions and click Redeem with Points. For eligible purchases, the number of points required has automatically been reduced by 50%. Redeem 8,000 points for every $100 you’re paying off.3 It’s that easy.
This offer applies to purchases of travel related services such as airlines, car rental agencies, travel agencies/tour operators, hotels, cruise lines, tour buses/bus lines, local/suburban commuter passenger transportation, ferries, local water transportation, railways, limousines/cabs and certain other transportation services, as classified in the credit card network and booked and redeemed by the primary cardholder or any authorized user until September 15, 2022.
You can still grab an Aventura Card and take advantage of this
Seeing that this offer is in place until September 15, 2022 you still have time to get a CIBC Aventura card and then redeem part of the welcome bonus towards this promotion. For example right now the CIBC Aventura® Visa Infinite* Card and CIBC Aventura® Gold Visa* Card are both offering up to 40,000 bonus points as their welcome offer. The first 20,000 are awarded on your first purchase so you can utilize those 20,000 points on a Shopping with Points redemption. and since both cards are first year free those points come to you at no cost outside of your spend - that could be as low as a $1 purchase to get the 20,000 points. The other 20,000 points take a full 12 months to get however.
Wrapping it up
We've seen several card issuers who typically rely on their cardholders to redeem travel via their own travel agencies now provide better redemption rates for going out and booking your own travel. BMO has one in place (read about that here) and now we have CIBC also offering the same. The difference with CIBC is you must be aware of that small window of when you can redeem points as the transaction has to be in pending status. Nonetheless as long as you know this, this is definitely a promotion to check out and consider utilizing by September 15, 2022!
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