If you’re a bit like me and have a lot of loyalty accounts to manage, there’s a great online tool that you can use to your advantage and make life a bit easier for you, this tool is called AwardWallet. There’s a web version and they also have an app for your smartphone of tablet. Even if you don’t have many accounts, AwardWallet is really handy as you can store your logins and passwords so you don’t need to remember them. 

With this post I intend to give you an overview of all functions that AwardWallet has to offer as well as cover any benefits and security issues you might be concerned about.

Versions

Currently there are 2 versions of AwardWallet, a free version and a Plus version. Anyone can sign up for the free version and the Plus version will cost you $ 5 per 6 months. The paid version will give you a couple more features as you can see in the overview below.

The big advantage that I like of the Plus account is the possibility to see the expiration dates of all your accounts, on the regular version you can only see up to 3 expirations. If you want to get geeky with your collection of miles and points for analysis, the Plus version can export your data to Excel and it will also enable you to view historical account activity graphs.

On the AwardWallet Plus you can see that the price field says “You get to choose”, but when you go to the upgrade/extend membership menu, you’ll see that it will cost $ 5.

I will get into the AwardWallet OneCard that is shown above later and I’ll explain what that is for, it is not obligatory to purchase!

Balances

The reason for me to start using AwardWallet was its functionality to manage all my airline and hotel loyalty programmes in one place. Before I knew about it, I had pieces of paper laying around with account numbers, passwords stored in Excel, everything was all over the place and messy!

AwardWallet enables you to add either airline or hotel accounts manually or automatically. The manual way is actually a bit silly as you need to enter everything by yourself and fill in the URL of the loyalty program you want to track.

As for the automatic tracking you only need to select the airline or hotel (as you can see there are way more options but I don’t use those), then enter you account number and password and AwardWallet will then automatically pull in all the data from the account.

I hear you thinking: “Are my accounts safe in AwardWallet? Or will anyone else have access to them?” Well there are several ways to secure your confidential information. First of all your AwardWallet account requires a password to login, besides the password you can also enable 2 form authentication. This means that you need a pincode generated by an app (Google Authenticator for example) on your smartphone in order to login.

Once you’re logged on and have setup your accounts that you want to keep track of, you will see an overview which is split in 2 sections. One is for airlines, the other for hotels or any programmes you saved in AwardWallet.

It will sort everything alphabetically, for airlines it will even display the alliance they belong to, your elite status is shown, followed by your points balance and the expiration date of your miles or points.

One of the best features of AwardWallet is that also have a browser extension for Chrome, which allows you to simply click on one of your loyalty accounts and it will open a new tab and automatically login to the specific website using the stored account information. That way you never have to remember a password again!

Travel Plans

Another cool feature of AwardWallet is to keep track of any of your travel plans such as flights or hotel stays that you booked. The easiest way to do this is to e-mail your booking confirmations to your personal AwardWallet e-mail address that was created when you signed up.

You could also create your trips manually, but that is just a waste of time if you ask me. The whole purpose of using AwardWallet is to make your travel life easy on you!

Once you e-mailed the confirmation, it will shows in the trips section of your account.

Bookings

I never noticed this feature before but apparently AwardWallet is now offering a booking service where you pay $ 150 per person for the staff of AwardWallet to find you award flights with your miles. Now I rather look myself and save the money to spend it on something else, but if you’re not familiar with booking awards and all the rules that come with it, you could always pay a fee. Or even better, get in touch with me and I’ll help you out for a small compensation!

Promos

AwardWallet has a built in functionality to keep track of any promotions related to your loyalty accounts. When you click on the Promos tab at the top your screen you will be able to select the region, in my case it would be Europe and it will show you any active promotions.

Now in my experience I found these promotions not to be accurate, sometimes it will show you promotions which have expired and are no longer valid. The easiest way for me to keep track of any promotions is via e-mail as it will provide you with a direct sign up link.

OneCard

On one of the earlier pictures you could see a mention of the AwardWallet OneCard which you can order for $ 10. The OneCard is a customized card with all your loyalty accounts on it, it will show the name of the loyalty program, your account number, your elite status level and the phone number of their customer service. This can come in handy, but most of the times I forget to take this card with me…

For me it’s easier to manage all my accounts in the AwardWallet app, which I will explain below and have all the customer service phone number on speed dial on my smartphone or in Skype in case the customer service is located abroad.

App

AwardWallet is also available for your smartphone or tablet, there are versions for IOS and Android. It offers you the same functionality as the web version but you always have it with you as most of us always have our smartphone with us.

They say that your accounts will be updated faster when you have a Plus account, but I didn’t notice any difference in speed when I had a free account.

When it comes to security the app can be secured via a pin code or through TouchID (on IOS). Keep in mind that in case you have setup 2 form authentication on the web version, you will be required to enter your 6 digit pin the first time you start up the app.

Invites & Bonus Points

The nice thing about AwardWallet is that you can invite others to use AwardWallet and you will receive bonus points for this which can later be redeemed. People that are invited via e-mail or social media can then sign up through a custom link and you will be rewarded with bonus points but you will also receive upgrade coupons for AwardWallet Plus.

Conclusion

I really like AwardWallet for managing all my frequent flyer and hotel loyalty accounts in one place and I have never had an issue with it. They recently changed the layout which doesn’t really bother me as it had no impact on the functionality.

If you have not signed up yet to use AwardWallet, feel free to use this link to register. Please note that I will receive bonus points for this but in order to make up for this I will give away 3 FREE upgrades for a 6 month Plus account! The first 3 people to send me an e-mail on [email protected] will receive one, just remember first come first served!