How To Track Your Credit Card Points And Miles Earnings

Don’t just hope that a purchase will code to the category you expect. Most online tools allow you to check how a merchant is classified after the purchase is made but one can help you before you make the purchase.

A Tool for All Cards: AwardWallet

No matter which card you use, AwardWallet’s Merchant Category Lookup Tool allows you to see how your purchases have coded.

For example, you may want to confirm that Whole Foods purchases are categorized as a supermarket. As you can see below, Whole Foods is coded as a grocery store/supermarket on several cards.

Most American Express Membership Rewards® earning cards have categories that earn bonus points. For example, The Platinum Card® from American Express earns 5 Membership Rewards Points per dollar for flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel on up to $500,000 per calendar year, 5 points per dollar on prepaid hotels booked with American Express Travel and 1 point per dollar on other eligible purchases. The card’s annual fee is $695 (terms apply, see rates & fees).

Meanwhile, the American Express® Gold Card offers the following rewards: 4 Membership Rewards® points per dollar at restaurants, plus takeout and delivery in the U.S., 4 Membership Rewards® points per dollar at U.S. supermarkets (on up to $25,000 per calendar year in purchases, then 1 point per dollar), 3 Membership Rewards® points per dollar on flights booked directly with airlines or through American Express travel and 1 point per dollar on other eligible purchases. The card has a $250 annual fee (terms apply, see rates & fees).

While it should be pretty clear what counts as an airline, you might want to check if your favorite cafe or market is earning bonus points before making future purchases. Here’s how to do so.

Finding the Membership Rewards Points Earned on a Purchase

American Express makes it very easy to find the points earned on Membership Rewards-earning cards from prior purchases. Just log in to your Amex account and view the Membership Rewards page. Alternatively, from your account dashboard, click the Rewards tab at the top of the page and then select Points Summary.

By default, this page is going to show your Membership Rewards points activity from all Membership Rewards accounts, filtered by calendar month. If you want to narrow the activity to a particular card, select that card from the dropdown box.

You’ll notice that for every transaction, the right-hand column displays the number of points earned for that purchase. If your purchase qualified for bonus points, it will be marked as such (like the black 4X above on an Amex hotel purchase) and the number of points will be calculated with the correct multiplier.

You can also select the text link to Show All Filters to sort by Activity for example, Earned, Redeemed and Pending) or by card member if you have authorized users on your cards.

Summary of Membership Points-Earnings by Card

On the right side of this Points Summary page are the totals of how many points you’ve earned, redeemed and have pending across all Membership Rewards cards this year. These numbers are going to be constant no matter which card you select at the top of the page.

A separate widget below the points summary also shows your spending and points-earnings by category. This makes it easy for you to combine this data across all of your American Express cards to see if you have maximized your card selection.

Earnings on Co-branded Cards

Rewards for airline and hotel co-branded credit cards can be viewed the same way you’d view your Amex Membership Rewards accounts.

Several Chase cards offer bonus points or miles for spending in a particular category, although the bonus categories depend on the card. For example:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve®*: Earn 5 points per dollar on flights and 10 points per dollar on hotels and car rentals when purchasing travel through Chase Travel℠ immediately after the first $300 is spent on travel purchases annually. Earn 3 points per dollar on other travel and dining and 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases.
• Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card*: Earn 5 points per dollar on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3 points per dollar on dining, select streaming services, and online grocery purchases (excluding Walmart, Target and wholesale clubs), 2 points per dollar on all other travel purchases and 1 point per dollar on other purchases.
• Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card: Earn 3 points per dollar on the first $150,000 spent on travel and select business categories each account anniversary year and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases.

Chase Ultimate Rewards® Points Earned on a Purchase

Editor’s Note: Chase recently updated their Chase Travel℠ portal experience. Content that references the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal may be outdated. Please check back for the latest updates.

To find out how many points a particular purchase earned, browse to the Ultimate Rewards Activity page. After logging in to your Chase account, select the card for which you want to see transaction details. At the top of the page on the left, you’ll see a summary of earnings. To see the details of points earned on individual transactions, scroll down and click the “See rewards activity” button. Now on the Rewards Activity page, scroll down to the “Your most recent activity” section. Your earn rate (and the associated points per transaction) is clearly displayed.

Summary of Your Ultimate Rewards Points Earnings

There are two ways to see a summary of your points earnings by bonus category. When you first log in to your Chase Ultimate Rewards homepage, a bar graph on the homepage breaks down your year-to-date points earned for that card. New cardholders can also see the progress made toward meeting a new account bonus, and Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders can see if there is any unused annual travel credit for the year.

If you want a further breakdown of earnings, you need to head to the Ultimate Rewards Activity page. At the top of this page, you’ll see the number of points you have, how many will be deposited on your next statement and your year-to-date earnings. Below that, there’s a more-detailed bar graph of year-to-date earnings by category and bonus category.

Earnings on Co-branded Cards

Airline and hotel co-branded credit cards don’t offer as clean of a presentation. However, you can find out how many points or miles you earned from a single purchase in your account activity page. From the Chase dashboard, select the card from the left side of the page and then click the arrow on the right side of the transaction you want to check.

This will expand the transaction’s details. At the bottom of this, you’ll see the number of points or miles earned from the transaction.

The only way to find a summary of the purchases that you’ve made on a co-branded card appears to be to look at your statement. To find this, head to Chase’s Statements and Documents page, select your card and click the notepad next to the statement you want to open.

In the top right corner, there is a summary of how many points or miles you’ve earned by category for this statement. This box will also show you how many points you’ve earned on this account. Note that I have found this is based on a cardholder year instead of a calendar year.

Citi’s credit cards have a variety of bonus categories. The Citi Premier® Card earns 3 ThankYou points per dollar at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, air travel and hotels, 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases and a total of 10 points per dollar on hotels, car rentals, and attractions (excluding air travel) booked on the Citi Travel℠ portal through June 30, 2024.

Meanwhile, the Citi Rewards+® Card earns 2 ThankYou Points per dollar at supermarkets and gas stations for the first $6,000 in spending per year and 1 ThankYou Point per dollar on other eligible purchases, plus 5 ThankYou® Points per dollar on hotel, car rentals and attractions booked on CitiTravel.com through December 31, 2025. All earnings are rounded up to the nearest 10 ThankYou Points. That’s a lot to keep up with, so here’s how to check that transactions are crediting correctly:

ThankYou Points Earned on a Purchase

To check the earnings on your card, log in to your Citi account and go to your account dashboard. Select the card that you want to check and click the Points Summary option toward the bottom of the page. On this page, you’ll find your current balance.

However, the earn rate is not displayed. You can use the filters under “Points Details” to view your earn rate across multiple statements.

Further down on that page, Citi shows line items of your points activity and the bonus category the activity applied to. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to show earnings by merchant; just by bonus category.

Capital One is known for its simple and straightforward rewards earning structure. The advertisements featuring double miles and no blackout dates were ubiquitous for years. Then in late 2018, Capital One added another option to this simple redemption structure: the ability to transfer Capital One Miles to airlines.

Capital One also launched the Savor Rewards Credit Card*. While some other Capital One cards still offer a flat reward earning rate of between 1 and 2 miles per dollar spent, the Savor Rewards Card offers bonus categories for dining and entertainment.

Capital One Miles Earned on a Purchase

To find out how many points you earned on a purchase, first sign in to your Capital One account. On the dashboard, click the View Rewards link in the Rewards section.

On the next screen, click the Earn Activity tab to see your recent points earning activity. There Capital One gives line items of your recent activity, and includes the type of activity and how many points were earned from the purchase.

To see points earning details beside the most recent purchases, you will need to check your card statement. There’s no earning detail of earnings by purchase; Capital One will only display your recent activity. Instead, there’s a box showing the previous balance and miles earned on this statement.

As you can see, it’s not always straightforward to figure out how many points a transaction will earn. But once you know the tricks, you can confirm how transactions with merchants will code. Armed with the right information, you’ll be sure to maximize your earnings and achieve your travel goals quicker.

To view rates and fees for The Platinum Card® from American Express please visit this page.
To view rates and fees for American Express® Gold Card please visit this page.