You almost certainly have loyalty points sitting somewhere right now. An airline account you have not opened since a flight last year. A bank rewards balance you have never once checked. A supermarket card in your wallet that you tap out of habit and never think about again.
Most of that balance is not lost yet. Some of it is closer to disappearing than you think, and there is usually no warning before it happens.
Why Loyalty Points Expire At All
Almost every loyalty program, airline, bank, or retail, puts some kind of clock on unused points. The two most common versions:
- Rolling inactivity expiry. Your points expire a set number of months after your last earning or redemption activity. Every new transaction resets the clock, which is exactly why long-dormant accounts are the ones at risk.
- Fixed validity expiry. Points expire a set period after they were earned, or on a fixed calendar date, regardless of activity. Common in airline, retail, and card schemes, and easy to miss because staying active does not help.
Neither version is unreasonable on its own. The problem is arithmetic, not intent: one program with one clock is easy to track. Six to ten programs, each with its own clock, its own rules, and its own definition of "activity," is not a tracking problem a person can solve by remembering harder.
How Much Is Actually At Risk
This is not a small, personal inconvenience. It is a measurable, national-scale number.
Expires across UAE loyalty programs every year
Based on the UAE loyalty market's estimated total value and a conservative 15% breakage rate, the industry term for value that is earned but never redeemed. Sources: ResearchAndMarkets (2024), McKinsey.
Breakage is not evidence that any single program is designed against you. It is what happens, at scale, when the number of programs a person holds outpaces the attention any person has left to give them. The UAE holds one of the highest loyalty program densities in the region, more airlines, more banks, and more retail schemes competing for the same wallet, which is exactly why the number is this large here specifically.
Expiry Patterns By Program Type
Exact terms vary by program and change over time, so treat the figures below as a starting map for what to go check, not a substitute for reading your own program's terms. That caveat is itself the point of this section: nobody should have to memorise this.
Airline miles
Airline programs split between the two models. Some use rolling inactivity expiry, reset by any qualifying transaction. Others give each mile a fixed validity period from the date it was earned, so staying active does not protect older miles: Emirates Skywards, for example, counts three years per mile. Airline programs also frequently run a separate clock for tier status miles, which lapse on a fixed annual date regardless of your redeemable balance. The two are easy to confuse and often catch frequent flyers off guard.
Bank and credit card rewards
Card-linked points typically expire annually, on account closure, or on a fixed multi-year cycle set by the issuing bank. Because these points accrue passively on ordinary spending, they are the easiest balance to forget entirely, nobody opens a separate app just to check reward points on a card they already use daily for other things.
Retail and supermarket points
Retail and grocery loyalty schemes vary the most: some run rolling inactivity windows as short as 12 months, others tie expiry to a calendar year. These programs also tend to have the lowest per-visit point values, which is exactly why they are checked least often and expire most quietly.
Telecom and other everyday programs
Telecom loyalty points and similar everyday-spend schemes often carry short rolling windows, since the underlying spend is frequent, the expiry clock is usually short to match. A single quiet month is sometimes enough to trigger it.
The pattern across all four categories is the same. None of them are unusual on their own. The risk comes entirely from holding several of them at once, each with a different clock, none of which send a clear warning before the deadline passes.
Why Six To Ten Programs Is The Real Problem
The average UAE resident holds six to ten loyalty programs across airlines, banks, and retail, and actively manages fewer than three of them. That is not a personal failing. It is what happens when every bank, airline, and retailer you interact with hands you a separate program, and none of them talk to each other or to you about the others.
Eight Programs, Eight Clocks, One Person
Say you hold an airline program, two bank card rewards accounts, a supermarket card, a coffee chain app, a pharmacy card, a ride-hailing points balance, and a hotel program. That is eight separate expiry rules to track, in eight separate apps or statements, none of which cross-reference each other. Checking all eight manually, every month, is not a realistic habit for anyone with a full-time job.
It is not that people do not care about value they have already earned. It is that no single person can hold eight different expiry calendars in their head at once. The problem is arithmetic: eight programs, eight clocks, one person.
The Three-Minute Check
You do not need a new system to reduce your risk today. You need three minutes and a list of every program you actually hold.
List every program you hold, including the ones you have not opened in months. Most people can name three or four immediately and forget two or three more until they check their wallet or inbox.
Search your inbox for each program's name. Expiry notices, when they exist at all, usually arrive by email and get buried under everything else. A quick search surfaces any warning you already missed.
Open each app or account directly and check the balance and expiry terms yourself, rather than trusting a notification to arrive in time. For the accounts you have not opened in over a year, do this first.
Note which ones use rolling inactivity expiry and make one small qualifying transaction if a balance is meaningful and the account has gone quiet, this alone resets most inactivity clocks.
This manual check is worth doing today regardless of what you do next. It is also why MYLO exists: one place that holds every program you have, so the list in step one is never something you rebuild from memory again.
The Bottom Line
Loyalty points are not a permanent balance sitting safely until you decide to use them. They are a perishable asset with a clock attached, and the more programs you hold, the more clocks you are quietly responsible for tracking. None of this is any one program's fault. It is what happens when six to ten separate systems all assume you are watching, and none of them are watching each other.
MYLO puts every program you hold, airline, bank, retail, and more, in one place and shows the combined value in dirhams. You add each program by picking it from a list, with a rough balance if you want one. Scanning a card is an optional shortcut. MYLO never connects to a bank account and never asks for a program login. It costs nothing to see where you stand: the free Loyalty Audit takes about sixty seconds.