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When is Sterling credit card spend treated as foreign spend and earns double points?

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I had an email from a reader who has the Priority Club Black Visa card. This gives double points (4 points per £1) on overseas spend.

He has noticed that both Amazon and Expedia were giving double points, even though the transactions were in Sterling. This is presumably due to the fact that (for VAT reasons and corporation tax reasons), Amazon processes your transactions in Luxembourg and Expedia processes your transactions in France.

There are a few credit cards which offer double points for foreign spending:

It would be interesting to hear of any other experiences with £ spend being treated as FX spend. Hotels.com seems to be treated as foreign spend on the Amex Gold card, for instance, although oddly parent Expedia does not.

I have heard that you also get FX double points for £ spend on the Amex Gold with American Airlines (UK £ site) and Hotelopia. Actually, these three all post as 3x with Amex Gold because you get the travel bonus as well as the FX bonus.

In particular, if you have the Amex Gold card, it would be interesting if you could go online and look at your Membership Rewards statement. This is because Amex shows you the points you earn on a transaction-by-transaction basis, so it is easy to see if a particular merchant comes up as double points. What else works with that card?

EDIT: Based on feedback so far, we have:

Companies treated by Amex Gold as foreign spend (and of course travel spend as well, so 300% bonus): easyJet, hotels.com, ebookers, American Airlines, Hotelopia, iTunes, Apple Store, lastminute (may treat non-travel as travel spend), Ocado, BA (one-off? only one report)

Companies treated by Priority Club Black as foreign spend: Amazon, Expedia, Paypal

The Lloyds TSB Avios Duo card does NOT treat Amazon as foreign spend (my own observation)


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Comments (11)

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  • ups says:

    Interesting. I may be doing some amazon shopping soon, will use the Amex gold and see what posts!

    • Jeremy Hodgkin says:

      I have AMEX GC and it’s somewhat confusing. Card used to book flights with Ebookers and received points + 200% bonus points, booked flights with Lastminute, received points + 100% bonus.

  • Andrew says:

    Easyjet £ transactions have always posted on my gold card with triple points. No idea why but it’s always a welcome surprise

  • louie-m says:

    “Hotels.com seems to be treated as foreign spend on the Amex Gold card” – I can confirm this as of earlier this week. Triple points in total because you get Outward Spend and Travel bonuses (not sure if that is only in the first year though).

  • Kim says:

    My Gold Amex has always given me a 100% travel bonus at Twickenham Waitrose, but not at Richmond… Bizarre given both are suburban town-centre stores around 2 miles apart, but I’m happy with it given I prefer the former.

    I don’t get any bonus at Amazon, but I do get a 100% ‘outbound spend bonus’ for the Amazon operated M&S outlet website, and the auto top-up on my Oyster card sometimes gets a travel bonus and sometimes doesn’t…

    Time to register my PC Black with Amazon I think!

  • Britbronco says:

    Only single points for Amazon on my gold Amex. iTunes gets double points though.

  • OliUK says:

    Although its not travel it might be worth noting that I have always got Triple points on my amex gold when doing my grocery shopping online with Ocado.

    I believe they advertise it as 2x points on shopping but have always posted x3.

  • Ant says:

    I have looked at the MR points gained from using the Amex Preferred Rewards Gold Card and I got double points when I bought from Apple UK website, Lastminute (theatre tickets) , and Amazon.

  • ComeFlyWithMe123 says:

    I also had a look at my AMEX gold card points and I am getting the following

    200% bonus @ Tesco Filling stations
    200% bonus @ Easyjet
    300% bonus @ BA
    0% bonus@ Onhotels.com :o(
    100% bonus @ supermarkets in general (Tesco, Sainsburys etc)
    100% bonus @ avios.com

    Note that I am still in my first year with my AMEX GC (aquired July 2012)

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