In my experience, the credit card is used to guarantee the room, but it is not charged in advance. When you look at your credit card account, do you see charges being made at the time you make the reservation ?
I bought large denomination hyatt gift card and plan to stay at several properties. Didn't want to get charged for credit card reservation to hold rooms, and unable to change to gift card, so haven't completed booking process.
I read wiki more carefully, and it shows points deduct at time of reservation, but cash portion settled at checkout. So I'll go ahead with reservations.
Thanks