When do Velocity Points expire?

Your hard-earned Velocity Points and Status Credits won’t stick around forever. Fortunately, it’s very easy to stop your Velocity Points from expiring indefinitely by following a few simple steps.

Read on to find out how to keep your Velocity Points from expiring and how to check the expiration of your Velocity Status Credits.

A points-earning credit card, like the one below, can prevent your hard-earned Velocity Points from expiring.

Citi Premier Credit Card

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• Sign-up Bonus: 110,000 bonus Velocity Frequent Flyer Points¹ with the Citi Premier Credit Card
• Rewards Earn Rate: 2 Citi reward Points per $1 spent on Eligible Transactions online or overseas and 1 Citi reward Point per $1 spent on Eligible Transactions everywhere else, capped at 200,000 Citi reward Points over a 12-month period. 
• Annual Fee: $300 p.a. ongoing
• Offer expires: 27 May 2025

The Citi Premier Credit Card offers 110,000 bonus Velocity Points¹ for new cardholders who spend $8,000 or more on eligible purchases within 3 months from approval. The card earns up to 2 Citi reward Points per dollar on eligible transactions and includes complimentary membership and two airport lounge visits every year when you enrol in Priority Pass™, plus the ability to automatically transfer Points from the Citi Rewards Program to Velocity Frequent Flyer each month with Points Autosweep⁴. Offer ends 27 May 2025. This product is provided by National Australia Bank Limited, using certain trademarks temporarily under license from Citigroup Inc.

Do Velocity Points expire?

Velocity Frequent Flyer now classifies activities into two groups: short-term activity and long-term activity.

Short-term activity

Family Points Transfers, Family Pooling, and points you receive via an inheritance are all short-term activities. These points expire at the end of the following calendar month in which they were received unless there is also long-term activity to boost the expiry date further.

For example, if a new Velocity member receives 100,000 Velocity Points as a transfer from a family member on 10 February 2025 and makes no other eligible earning or redemption activity, those points will expire on 31 March 2025.

If an existing member already has Velocity Points with a longer expiry date and the latest activity is a short-term activity, then the current expiry date will also be pushed until the end of the following month. For example, if you had Velocity Points due to expire on 10 February 2027 and receive points via a Family Transfer, your whole balance is now valid until 31 March 2027 (until you complete more qualifying activities).

Long-term activity

All other points earned from flying and program partners (including bank transfer programs) and used for redemptions count as long-term activity.

Whenever you perform one of these actions, your Velocity Points will be valid for a further 24 months. As long as you keep earning or using Velocity Points, your balance expiry date will continue to be extended.

How do I stop Velocity Points from expiring?

To stop your Velocity Points from expiring, you need to earn or redeem one point under a ‘long-term activity’ within a 24-month period. It is as simple as that.

This could be as easy as swiping your card at 7-Eleven, transferring FlyBuys points to Velocity, or booking a reward seat with Virgin Australia or its partner airlines. You could even earn Velocity Points from riding with DiDi, shopping through the Velocity e-Store, or buying wine. In fact, there are many ways to earn Velocity Points without flying at all!

Each time you earn or redeem a Velocity Point, the expiry of your balance is reset to another 24 months.

If you constantly earn Velocity Points, such as from a credit card or from flying, chances are you will never have to worry about your balance expiring.

There’s also the option of transferring your Velocity Points to KrisFlyer miles. The transfer rate is 1.55 Velocity Points to 1 KrisFlyer mile, with a minimum transfer of 5,000 Velocity Points. Once you convert Velocity Points to KrisFlyer miles, then a hard expiry date of three years applies to your KrisFlyer miles.

So, if you really don’t think you’ll be able to earn or redeem a single Velocity Point for two years, then this method effectively ‘extends’ the life of your points, albeit with a different program and at a slight loss during the transfer process.

Note that this transfer works in the opposite direction as well. You can also convert KrisFlyer miles to Velocity Points at a 1.55:1 rate, with a minimum transfer of 5,000 KrisFlyer miles – handy if you need some ‘activity’ to keep your Velocity Frequent Flyer account active.

Also read: The best ways to use Velocity Points

Do Velocity Status Credits expire?

Yes, Velocity Status Credits will automatically expire 12 months after earning them, with no exceptions.

Velocity Frequent Flyer uses a ‘rolling’ 12-month cycle, unlike Qantas Frequent Flyer, which uses a fixed anniversary date. This means that once you reach a new Velocity status tier, you have 12 months from that date to earn enough Status Credits to maintain your status.

In the example below, a Velocity Gold member has earned 571 Status Credits in the last 12 months. They are about to have 30 Status Credits expire by 1 April. To move up to Platinum, they would need to earn enough Status Credits before the specified timeframe for which existing Status Credits will expire.

Velocity Status Credits are primarily earned from eligible flights with Virgin Australia and its network of partner airlines. But there are a few other ways to earn Status Credits, including:

• Shopping at Coles and swiping your Flybuys card (up to 120 Status Credits per year)
• Through Velocity Family Pooling
• Reaching the required spend on the American Express Velocity Platinum credit card (up to 100 Status Credits per year)
• Bonus Status Credits through the Virgin Money High Flyer Card.

Note that from 1 October 2025, changes to the Velocity Frequent Flyer program mean that at least 50% of Status Credits required to attain or maintain a tier must be from Virgin Australia-marketed flights flown by the member. Other ways of earning Velocity Status Credits, like credit cards, shopping and Family Pooling, will only count towards 25-50% of the target.

In short, you can’t prevent Velocity Status Credits from expiring. Still, you can monitor the expiration of your Status Credits to ensure you have enough time to earn more if you want to attain or maintain elite status.

Also read: Maximise your Velocity Status Credits with these flights

Summing up

There is no need to be concerned about the expiry of your Velocity Points. Just be sure to earn or use some Velocity Points every now and then – even a single point will do – and you will be fine for another two years.

Velocity Status Credits are a bit harder to deal with since they have a fixed expiry. But Velocity Gold and Platinum status come with a host of perks, and you’ll have to do a bit of actual flying to get there!

Also read: When do your frequent flyer points expire?

Featured image: Brandon Loo.

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