Bonus Avios Part 1 – Amex Currency Exchange and Moneycorp

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• Linda says:

  13 May13 May 13:48

  I ended up exchanging currency with Thomas Exchange, it had a much higher exchange rate. It would have be inclined to use American Express Exchange, if only it was still at Terminal 5. Still makes no sense they closed that at T5.

• Emily says:

  13 May13 May 14:31

  Sorry if this is a silly question… when you say Amex treat it like a purchase and issue points that’s great, but does that also mean that they don’t treat it like a cash advance and ie there is not interest. I always thought that you shouldn’t use a credit card for foreign exchange but maybe I’ve missed something?

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 14:53

    Yes. Normal purchase.

    This ONLY works on the Amex travelmoneynow site and ONLY with Amex-issued Amex cards.

    Try it on any other site or with any other card and it will be treated as a cash advance, incur fees, incur interest and not earn miles.

    • Emily says:

      13 May13 May 15:01

      Thx!

• Zander Buchan says:

  13 May13 May 15:22

  I had a problem with this deal when trying to buy with my BA Amex card, in as much, that the transaction exceeded my daily cash limit at Amex. Which unfortunately is less than the threshold for free home delivery. Bit of a catch 22!
  Nevertheless, this is still a good deal and I have used it twice now, paying by debit card.

  • Lissa Herron says:

    13 May13 May 15:26

    You just have to ask BA to raise your daily cash limit, which they do right away over the phone very easily. I did this back in January.

• Andy says:

  13 May13 May 17:13

  Just wanted to check if I understand this deal correctly – if I buy £500 of USD dollars with an Amex Gold card I should get 500 bonus Avios, 500 standard Avios (1 Avios per £1) and 500 Amex MR points i.e. 1500 Avios in total?

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 17:21

    Correct

• Andrew S says:

  13 May13 May 19:38

  This may be dumb question, but does foreign currency extend to sterling travellers cheques?

  • Andrew S says:

    13 May13 May 20:45

    No, called out in the terms and conditions…

  • Rob says:

    13 May13 May 21:39

    No

    Although you can buy £ travellers cheques via travelmoneynow and pay them into your bank – it is treated as a purchase. It won’t earn you any Avios from travelmoneynow however for the purpose of this bonus.

• Peter says:

  14 May14 May 11:07

  Is this a once only deal, or could I do it twice? as an upcoming self catering holiday I could easliy use £1000 in the holiday? Could I do two seperate transactions?

• Charlie says:

  15 May15 May 23:40

  Yes – I’m thinking along the same lines as Peter here.
  Also, subject to the maximum cash advance threshold, is there anything theoretically preventing me from making multiple FEX transactions with my newly acquired BA black Amex in order to trigger avios bonuses and the 241 voucher at the £10k spend threshold?

  • Rob says:

    16 May16 May 00:27

    Yes. Your Amex statement will show something called an ‘Available Cash Limit’. This is max you can take as cash or cash equivalents. Even though FX transactions are treated as a purchase, they are treated as cash for purposes of hitting this limit.

    Amex is also VERY wary of fraud will look very suspiciously at a new cardholder who starts buying lots of currency. You may even find that your card is not able to buy currency if this is your first Amex card – some people have reported being blocked.

    If you wanted to take it easy and buy, say, £500 worth per month for a year and hit 60% of your £10k target that way then you would get away with it. Try to do £10k in a month and you have no chance.

    • Charlie says:

      16 May16 May 01:32

      Thanks. Yes I had in mind something along the lines of what you’ve suggested – a reasonable (but not excessive) amount of foreign currency that I could either use or exchange back into £ and pay back into my bank account or purchase £ travellers cheques and do the same thing (although I appreciate these wouldn’t trigger the 500 bonus avios that your post is highlighting). I’m well aware of the anti corruption and fraudulent flags that may trigger if I went FEX transaction mad in a short space of time. I have just completed 12 months with a gold charge card, triggering all the relevant bonuses and my account has always been in good standing, although I’ve never activated the cash advance facility on my Amex(es) before. I guess that would be a good place to start…

• James W says:

  17 May17 May 01:00

  My available cash limit shows £1,650 but I can’t get £500 worth of currency from the site.
  Called Amex and they told me there was nothing they could do about it but I should just try with lower amounts until it lets me order it for delivery & they credited my account £10 to cover two lots of delivery charge.
  I took the £10 and went elsewhere. Nobs ~!

  Weird thing is I could order £500 worth a month ago (first time I’ve used the service). They must have blacklisted me or something.

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