With 6 ways to earn AIR MILES® Reward MilesTM (that’s right—6!), our program is made for stacking—in other words, earning multiple ways on the same purchase. Below is an overview of how stacking works. We’ll follow it up with a deep dive and some hot tips that *gasp* even some of our employees don’t know about.
If you’re looking to get the most out of AIR MILES, timing your everyday purchases to get the most value back is the way to go.
The basics: Start with offers
This is simple. With a single tap, you can find all the offers we’ve collected just for you on the AIR MILES app or our offers page. (If you don’t have the app, get it now on Google Play or the App Store. Seriously. It’s a no-brainer.)
Here are examples of the different types of offers you can stack:
Flash Offers
These happen each week but only for a limited amount of time so you need to jump on them. Make sure to check the AIR MILES app every Friday for the offer of the week and opt in. That part is important!
Card-Linked Offers
Earn Bonus MilesTM at select stores and brands simply by linking any Canadian-issued Mastercard® one time to your AIR MILES card. You can stack these offers in a few ways—by linking your BMO AIR MILES Mastercard or by using a CLO purchase during a promotion like Shop the Block.
AIR MILES Receipts
Earn Bonus Miles on groceries at major stores across the country by scanning your receipt using the AIR MILES app. Keep reading to find out how you can earn an additional 2x Miles by using your BMO AIR MILES credit card to pay for your groceries.
Promotions and events
Shop the Block® and Redemption Events are some of our biggest program-wide promotions each year. But keep your eye out—we also run other events, like 30x the Miles, just, well, because.
Airmilesshops.ca
You already know you can shop online and earn at 250+ stores like Amazon, Walmart and Lululemon through airmilesshops.caTM, right? Great! But what you might not know is that we frequently—like, VERY often—offer extra Miles at individual stores as well as site-wide.
Step it up with BMO AIR MILES credit and debit cards
Okay, here’s where things start to get interesting: If you use any of the BMO credit and debit cards listed below, you’ll earn additional Reward Miles. In other words, take any Bonus Offer listed above and add the following:
- Get 1 Reward Mile for every $30 spent using your BMO Debit Card*
- Get 25 Bonus Miles each month if you also have a BMO AIR MILES World Mastercard®* or BMO AIR MILES World Elite®* Mastercard
- Get 2x Miles when you shop at eligible wholesale clubs, grocery stores and alcohol retailers
- Get 3x Miles when you shop at partners at participating AIR MILES partners such as Shell
Here’s a real-world example of how Michelle from London stacked multiple offers with Shop the Block using her BMO AIR MILES credit card.
Michelle spent just under $200 at Well.ca through airmilesshops.ca on unicorn party decorations and beauty basics like shampoo and face cream during a 7x Miles promotion and earned 56 Miles.
This purchase qualified as one partner shopped during our Shop the Block promotion. Because she also shopped at 4 more partners—Walmart and Amazon through airmilesshops.ca, Pharmasave, and Shell—during the promotion period, she’ll earn 825 Bonus Miles through Shop the Block alone.
That doesn’t even include the Miles Michelle earned by timing her in-store purchases just right. She shopped at Pharmasave during a Flash Offer, so she earned an additional 100 Miles there!
And when she filled up at Shell, it was during our Pump Up Your Miles event that gives Shell GO+ members 1 Mile for every litre purchased. There’s another 30 Miles in her pocket.
What’s more, Michelle used her BMO®† AIR MILES®† Mastercard® for every purchase, which has an earn rate of 3 Miles for every $25 spent at participating AIR MILES Partners.
Michelle earned a grand total of: 1175 Miles! (That’s like almost $125 in value)
While Michelle is clearly a pro shopper, look at how Brandon is, in our opinion, Canada’s most informed AIR MILES collector.
Take things up a notch: earn when you redeem
This is where things get next-level. Did you know that you can earn Bonus Miles when you redeem for merchandise, travel and Cash rewards? Even more when you’re an AIR MILES Gold or Onyx® collector? Let’s jump in.
Merchandise
Browse our merchandise catalogue and you’ll see just how many rewards come with Bonus Miles. Better still – look out for “redeem and earn” events where we offer Bonus Miles across the entire catalogue.
Gold Collectors: Use up to 5% fewer Miles
Onyx Collectors: Use up to 10% fewer Miles
For example, if you redeemed for a Keurig coffee maker during this promotion using 2,150 Dream Miles, you would get 538 Miles back—that’s enough for another reward, like movie tickets.
Cash Rewards
We frequently run Redeem and Earn events for Cash Rewards too. So in the 25% back promotion, you would get 23 Miles back if you redeemed 95 Cash Miles. What’s more, if you redeemed 4 times, which is the maximum amount, you would get 95 Cash Miles back, which is what you spent on one of those redemptions (win, win!).
Travel Rewards
We purposely saved this for last. It might look complicated, but with a little planning, see how you can really cash in on your next travel booking.
First—the basics: when you book using a credit card, you’ll earn Reward Miles:
- Blue collectors get 1 Mile for every $15 spent on travel
- Gold collectors get 1 Mile for every $10 spent on travel
- Onyx collectors get 1 Mile for every $5 spent on travel
Get even more when you book travel with an BMO AIR MILES credit card.
Cool, right? Remember that with travel, you can choose how you pay—use Dream Miles, your credit card or a combination of the two. So let’s look at how you can also stack when you redeem, too.
Car Rental
Use your linked Mastercard to book a car with Avis and get up to 200 Bonus Miles on your rental.
Hot Tip
If you use the BMO®† AIR MILES® WORLD ELITE® MASTERCARD® as your linked Mastercard, you’ll get 3 Miles for every $12 you spend at participating partners, to earn an additional 40 Reward Miles.
Flight
Use your BMO AIR MILES credit card to book your flights and earn 3x Reward Miles.
Hot Tips
Don’t have a credit card? Apply now and you’ll get 3,000 Welcome Bonus Miles – that’s practically enough for a trip.
We often run promotions on select destinations where you can earn enough to get more free travel.
Phew! It’s a lot, right? But also, SUPER rewarding if you really work the program. And if you come up with a new way to stack that we didn’t mention here, please let us know! We want all our collectors to stack as much as they can—to hack the program, really—so that they can get rewarded for their efforts with the currency we love most. More Miles!
