I have no experience with redeeming points for anything but cash. With usb, you can use points in their travel portal, I just cash them at cents per point.
If looking into a points ecosystem, don't forget venture X, much lower af. Id really be careful not to paint myself into a corner where I can't fly the most convenient airline.
As was already mentioned, if you stick with one hotel brand, you might get their card, they all have one. Example. amex has three hilton cards. These card rewards are in hotel points, good for hotel stays. I got the white card, just for the sub. Right now, this card,
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/?intlink=us-en-hp-product1-personal-creditcards
Has a 130,000 point sub for $3000 spend in 6 months and no fee the first year.
Another thing, there are no amex mr points cards with no fee, but amex does offer a no fee, no min checking account that does mr points, so, if you get a fee card for the sub points you can park them there if you later cancel the card. They pay a sub to, but they want a large direct deposit to collect it.
If you want to do deposit account subs but don't have the direct deposit, there are ways of simulating DD by depositing from your own account.😁😁
