Does the switch from Travelex to Amex Currency Exchange for Avios matter?

On 31st August, the very long-term relationship between Travelex and BA / Avios came to an end.

This partnership has been going for years, and was deep enough for Travelex to have occasional built-in FX booths inside BA lounges, including Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

(Very long term miles collectors will remember a crazy promo that Travelex ran in 2005. They offered 3 BA Miles for every £1 you spent on Travellers Cheques. Foolishly, they forgot to exclude Sterling Travellers Cheques. They also forgot that Gatwick offered Travellers Cheques for a flat fee of £3 rather than the usual 1.5% commission.

This is what you did. You withdrew £3,000 in cash from the bank. You popped down to Gatwick. You bought £3,000 of Sterling Travellers Cheques for £3,003. You pocketed 9,000 BA Miles. You paid the travellers cheques into your bank account the next day. You repeated as many times as you wanted. Fun times!)

Anyway, back to the point! Travelex has now been replaced by American Express Currency Exchange, and this is now the only way to earn Avios points on foreign currency.

(OK. Technically that is not true. You can still collect 1 BAA WorldPoint for every £10 you exchange at Travelex at Heathrow and other BAA airports. However, that only earns you 10% of the Avios you would get for changing the same sum at Amex.)

Clearly, as anyone who has ever checked the exchange rates will know, buying currency as the airport is almost always a bad deal unless you pre-order.  Only buy currency at the airport without pre-ordering if you are using someone elses money!

Earnings rate

With American Express Currency Exchange, you earn 1 Avios point per £1 exchanged. This is the same rate that Travelex offered. (Amex also offers 1 Virgin Flying Club mile per £1 as an alternative.)

Location choice

The downside to the Amex switch is location. According to this website, Amex Currency Exchange offices can only be found at Heathrow, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Birmingham. Virgin Flying Club gets around this by also partnering with Moneycorp, which fills the gap at Gatwick. The Avios deal is just with Amex, however. Tough luck for BA flyers out of Gatwick!

Exchange rates

Travelex was infamous for offering poorer exhange rates on its micro-site for BA customers than it was for the general public.

Let’s take a quick look at the cost of buying $1,000 pre-ordered. Please note that I did these sums a couple of weeks ago so do not try to compare them with any rate you see today.

At the time of doing my research, pre-ordering online for airport collection via the BA portal cost £631. Interestingly, using the Amex / Virgin website (processed by Moneycorp), it came to £638.

The main Travelex consumer website was charging £631, so (at least for pre-ordering) there is no difference. However, if the old batravelmoney.com website was still going, it would have come out higher than £631!

For comparison with other options for buying currency, the moneysavingexpert.com tool showed the cheapest delivered cost to be £626. Ironically, this is via Moneycorp who charged £638 via the Virgin Atlantic portal.

This small experiment shows that, actually, as long as you pre-order the Amex Currency Exchange offer is not a bad deal.  For $1,000, you would be earning 631 Avios and only paying £5 more than the cheapest alternative, with the added advantage of not having to wait around at home or work for a currency delivery – you collect at the airport instead.

Meanwhile, a final word on why you shouldn’t buy at the airport with no pre-order.  The day after I did the calculations above, I was at Heathrow T5. Travelex was selling US$ at a shocking rate of 1.458, meaning that your $1,000 would cost you a scary £686 … £48 more than you would have paid for pre-ordering! If you are spending your own money, avoid buying at the airport (without pre-ordering) at all costs.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.