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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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  • Jamie says:

    The inconsistency with the bonus points is very strange.

    The weirdest one I’ve found is on my Oyster top up which comes of my Amex gold card. The card loads £20 when I run out of money. If I the top up is done on the tube the points come through with a 200% bonus, if I run out while on a bus the top up is different and I only get a 100% bonus !!!

  • jimthehorsegod says:

    I might add that Paypal payments to many destinations, including (I think) all personal accounts, have a LUX country code and post double on my PCR Black Visa despite being in sterling

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

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