Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Hit your credit card sign-up bonus by buying fee-free American Express gift cards

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

I have written before about the range of American Express gift cards. They were not, to be honest, fantastic value.

However, they are now looking VERY INTERESTING if you have a spending target to hit on a new credit card. And if you don’t have a card with a spend target to hit, this might be a good time to apply for one!

Here is the official site for Amex gift cards.

Amex Gift Card

American Express is currently offering gift cards with NO purchase fee and NO delivery fee. You can buy up to five cards per order which means a maximum of (5 x £100 gift cards) £500 you can spend at a time.

You need to use promotional code VAL1 to get the purchase fee and postage deducted.

The offer runs until 31st March.  You can find full details on the cardmemberoffers.co.uk website here.

Without the fees, you are effectively buying Amex gift cards for face value. The standard fee plus postage on a £100 gift card is £3.95 so this is a substantial saving.

Amex accepts Amex plus Visa and MasterCard for the purchase of these cards. The payment almost certainly goes through as a ‘purchase’ rather than a cash advance, because Amex would need to disclose it otherwise.

The most obvious use of this promotion is to bring forward spending in order to hit a time-limited sign-up bonus on a new credit card.  If you recently took out a new card to boost your Avios collection before the devaluation on April 28th, this is a good way of getting the points in your account faster.

The cards can be used for normal spending at almost everywhere in the UK that accepts Amex cards. If you end up with a small residual balance of a few pounds, the easy way to cash it out is to buy an Amazon gift certificate and add it to your Amazon account as a credit against future purchases.  Amex will also refund the balance of a gift card by cheque or bank transfer if you make a formal request.

Note that Amex gift cards can only be used in the UK. They can be used for physical and online transactions but you cannot use them to obtain cash from an ATM. You need to use up the balance on the card within 12 months otherwise a £1.50 monthly fee will kick in.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways American Express, Marriott Bonvoy American Express

Comments (102)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Polly says:
    13 Feb13 February 06:58

    Will def be buying some this week, to get my new BAPP bonus in place, very useful. Just a shame cannot yet buy those new Pay.com cards that replace the 3V. Has anyone spotted them yet in Tesco?

    • xcalx says:
      13 Feb13 February 08:11

      Not spotted the Pay.com cards but did find 38 3Vs at a Tesco that had been out of stock for over 2 months.

      • BD701 says:
        13 Feb13 February 08:47

        I haven’t seen any in the Tesco by me for about 2-3 months either. I was worried they had stopped stocking them.

      • Jason says:
        13 Feb13 February 09:47

        Did they let you buy all 38?
        Just interested in case I ever see an abundance of cards, in a Tesco.

        • mark2 says:
          13 Feb13 February 10:05

          Folk lore suggests that more than four in a transaction can cause problems in the POS system, so I do a series of transactions with the dividers in place. Ensure that they scan each card individually as I have had a few cases where a card has been scanned twice and once not at all.
          If I wanted to buy 30+ I would put them in a trolley under some grocery not too far from the checkouts. Buy 3 X 4 and take them out to the car. Come back in, find the trolley and repeat at a different till perhaps even buying the grocery at the end. The self service till cannot activate the cards. When 3V cards return as Pay.com (allegedly shortly) they will probably still be rare as there is a big pent up demand.

          • callum says:
            13 Feb13 February 11:17

            Why on earth would you do that… Just take them all to the check out and say “can I buy these in groups of 4”.

            If you’re conscious about holding others up then do some and do the rest at a different check out.

          • mark2 says:
            13 Feb13 February 11:31

            you mean take them out without paying for them?

          • callum says:
            13 Feb13 February 21:42

            No I don’t mean steal them! Why do you think you have to leave the store?

          • The_Real_A says:
            13 Feb13 February 21:56

            In some cases Tesco staff are reported not to use common sense and make up all end of policies to prevent the individual from making large gift card transactions.

            In my own experience, when in business dress i manage to buy what ever i need although never more than 10 in a visit – without any fuss. If i try to do the same after the gym or whilst hung over on a Sunday morning invariably the manager or supervisor is called over and the Spanish inquisition begins.

            The other problem is a practical problem that Tesco IT seems unable to process multiples of gift card without them failing to validate – unless you persuade the cashier to hit total after every card (which sends the validation request individually rather than storing up a “huge” validation request to the end of the transaction”)

            If it all goes wrong in the middle of a huge order it draws a great deal of attention and manager types appear through every cranny.

        • Stuart says:
          13 Feb13 February 15:07

          I found 26 the other day while out in Yorkshire and brought them all in one go but paid in groups of 4 no problem. I did get a security warning from Amex the next time when I logged in to online banking but a 2 minute phone call sorted that out.

        • xcalx says:
          14 Feb14 February 08:47

          I bought them in groups of 6 for a total of 30 but 8 cards would not go through and the checkout person tried a few times to no avail.

    • avidsaver says:
      13 Feb13 February 15:33

      Does anyone know what a Pay.com gift card looks like?

      • mark2 says:
        13 Feb13 February 16:39

        exactly the same as 3V except for the name (from the website) but I don’t think any have been put out yet.

  • Melvin says:
    13 Feb13 February 07:06

    If just buy Amazon gift vouchers directly with my amex card, does this count as a cash advance and therefore not count towards spend bonus?

    • Kelvin says:
      13 Feb13 February 07:24

      Are they cash?

    • Polly says:
      13 Feb13 February 07:36

      Am sure we bought amazon vouchers with our amex earlier this year and they didn’t go through as cash. Am I correct here Rob? So you should be ok. Just try £10 gift voucher first to make sure.

      • Jason says:
        13 Feb13 February 07:40

        I bought a £100 Amazon gift voucher, for Christmas, didn’t go through as cash.

    • Rob says:
      13 Feb13 February 08:52

      No, it is normal Amex spend and treated as a purchase.

    • The_Real_A says:
      13 Feb13 February 21:58

      Oh course what you should do is buy Amazon gift cards with your AMEX at Morrison`s and get the fuel save voucher. £100 of vouchers gets you 10p a litre off and is valid for 3 months. You can use multiple vouchers at a the pump.

  • Fuggi says:
    13 Feb13 February 07:49

    Am assuming that, given it counts towards spend targets, we would also get Points (MR/Avios/etc) on the card?

  • richie says:
    13 Feb13 February 08:06

    Can you buy these cards. Buy amazon vouchers with them and then request the cash out for the whole thing from amazon?

  • Hilly says:
    13 Feb13 February 08:45

    I bought 5x £100 before christmas when the same no fee deal was on, to hit hilton target. Rang amex for refund and guy on the phone wanted to refund them back to hilton cc unless I no longer had that card. So I was waiting until hilton free night voucher was in the bag before ditching the hilton card and requesting refund again. I guess the thing to do is say they were given as a gift. Will try that angle today.

    • Scott Nelson says:
      13 Feb13 February 08:55

      Ah, thanks for this. Saved me a lot of hassle – I was about to put a couple of grand through on my BA card.

      I’ll continue to rack my brain about how this could be exploited.

      Amazon gift card -> bank transfer cashout is my other thought, but I don’t know much about this process.

      • mark2 says:
        13 Feb13 February 09:05

        Can you really get a cash refund for an Amazon Gift Card? This seems like an enormous loophole and I cannot find anything on the Amazon site. If someone will post a link I will buy £10,000 this afternoon.

    • Stuart says:
      13 Feb13 February 09:55

      Did you call the number on the back of the gift card? You enter the card number followed by #, then CVV followed by # and finally it will put you through to the options where you press 0 to speak to someone.

      I’ve done £500 worth twice and never had any trouble cashing them to my bank, although they will put you on hold for about 20 minutes while they go through the process of setting it up.

      If I got the same response that you did I’d hang up and call for a different operator.

  • Hilly says:
    13 Feb13 February 08:47

    No you can’t pay these into NS&I. Neither can you pay in the vanilla visa prepaid cards, tried that yesterday.

    • GB says:
      13 Feb13 February 09:09

      By vanilla do you mean 3v? standard visa (with purchase premium) were certainly working with NS and I last week?

    • d4ve says:
      13 Feb13 February 17:39

      I have just used a vanilla visa to pay into NS&I. Seems to work ok.

      • GB says:
        13 Feb13 February 20:36

        yep agree

        • Rasper says:
          17 Feb17 February 21:03

          Was there anything special to get the vanilla one to work?
          Would it also work for vanilla mastercard.

          I’ve been trying to pay in a gospendit one but it just seems to stay on the payment page, ie no loading or processing of the payment

      • avidsaver says:
        15 Feb15 February 15:47

        Where and how do you buy these vanilla cards please? Have searched online and only found Vanilla Visa available in US dollars.

        • mark2 says:
          15 Feb15 February 16:44

          I was confused when I saw people on PTS talking about vanilla cards. They actually meant Vanilla cards which are apparently available in UK, but not as far as I know in Tesco so no Avios.

  • Hilly says:
    13 Feb13 February 09:23

    By vanilla I mean vanilla visa gift cards with fee, no I don’t mean 3v.

  • Jeremy I says:
    13 Feb13 February 09:29

    Is it not better to buy a refundable purchase (hotels.com etc) and then obtain the refund and slowly wipe it out by spending on the card in the normal manner?

    • Pug106 says:
      13 Feb13 February 09:39

      I was thinking something along the same lines – buy/get refund – to hit spend and get Avios but wondered, like Clubcard points, would the Avios and spend be deducted/reduced on refund??

      • mark2 says:
        13 Feb13 February 09:56

        If you look at the list of Avios earned on your Amex statement you will see a negative number against each refund (as you would expect).

    • Rob says:
      13 Feb13 February 10:51

      Depends – points can be removed when a refund goes through, the only way to avoid it would be to settle the bill (which you might not want to do) and refund a month later.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Latest Forum Posts

Get 40,000 bonus points (worth 40,000 Avios) and £300 dining credit with The Platinum Card

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get £10 when you spend £150 on your free Currensea card

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? SPECIAL OFFER TO 12TH MAY EARN POINTS WORTH 30,000 AVIOS WITH CAPITAL ON TAP

Get 20,000 bonus points, four airport lounge passes and your first year free with American Express Gold

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!