You applied for a rewards credit card quite a while back because you wanted to get a little more for your money. Why not earn something in return for spending money you would spend anyway, right? Well, you’ve been racking up the rewards points and now it’s time to do something with them! But how do you actually redeem your credit card rewards points? And do you even have enough rewards points accumulated to redeem them for something you want anyway?

Let’s take a look at rewards points and how you can actually exchange them for something of value to you.

How Many Points do You Need Before You Can Redeem Them?

Unfortunately there’s no easy answer to this question. That’s because it varies, not only by which credit card company you use and what card you specifically have but also by the actual reward you want to redeem your points for. It’s a safe bet to say that you’ll need at least a few thousand rewards points to redeem them for even a low-level reward though. And if you want to redeem them for something more valuable, you could easily need tens of thousands of rewards points (or more).

Let’s use ANZ as an example, assuming you have one of their rewards cards like the ANZ Visa Rewards credit card. If you visit the ANZ rewards website you’ll find that you need to accumulate 3990 rewards points just to get a $20 gift card / voucher for Barbeques Galore or iTravel Books. For 4685 rewards points you could make a $25 donation to charities like the Red Cross or RSPCA. On the other end of the spectrum if you wanted to redeem your points for an iRobot Roomba vacuum, you would have to accumulate 107,060 rewards points. (Note: Rewards point requirements and available rewards listed were accurate at the time of writing, but they may change.)

How to Redeem Your Points

How you redeem your rewards points may also vary a bit depending on your credit card company. In many cases you’ll be able to follow a process similar to that offered by ANZ though. You visit their rewards website, browse the rewards (sometimes only viewable after logging in), and redeem them online. Points are deducted from your balance, and your reward will be shipped to you (or sent digitally as the case may be).

If you have a frequent flyer card it might be a two-step process. For example you’ll choose to redeem your rewards points for frequent flyer points with your chosen frequent flyer programme (as opposed to gift cards, merchandise, etc.). Then you’ll redeem your frequent flyer points for airline tickets, upgrades, or similar rewards directly through your frequent flyer programme.

You can always contact your credit card company or login to your account with them online. There you should be able to find more specific information about how your own credit card company lets you redeem rewards. And if you’re still in the phase of comparing rewards cards, be sure to look at their rewards sites before applying (if they’re available without logging in) so you can see exactly what kinds of rewards they have and exactly how many points you actually need to earn before being able to redeem them.