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Tesco Visa gift cards DO now qualify for 150 bonus Clubcard points on £50 spend

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For a surprisingly long time now (over six months) Tesco has been offering 150 bonus Clubcard points when you spend £50 on gift cards in-store.

Here is the Tesco webpage which outlines the deal and here is one of my earlier articles on it.

There were two exceptions to which gift cards counted for this promotion. You were not allowed to buy Tesco gift cards (makes sense!) and you were not allowed to buy Visa debit cards.

Tesco has now changed the rules. The Visa debit cards DO now count for the 150 bonus Clubcard points bonus.

In-store signage has not been changed so you will still see notices showing that they do not count. However, it is on the Tesco web site. Go here and scroll down to the section on Visa gift cards, and you will see:

Do I get Clubcard points when I buy a Visa Gift Card?

If you’re a Clubcard customer, you’ll earn 150 Clubcard points for every £50 you spend in a single transaction on Branded Gift Cards (including the Visa branded Cards) at the time of purchase.

I have done a test purchase this morning at Canary Wharf and can confirm that it works. 150 Clubcard points were showing on my receipt.

Visa gift cards come with a huge list of terms, conditions and fees. However, there are only four things you need to know:

A £25 card carries a £2.95 fee, a £50 card carries a £3.95 fee

Tesco limits you to £2,000 of purchases per year (not sure how this is tracked) and 5 cards per transaction

You need to register the card before you can use online or by phone, presumably to put a name on file to match up with the card details the retailer enters, but for face to face transactions it can be used immediately. (When you have registered one card, adding additional cards is very quick and painless.)

It is treated as a debit card when you use it

1 hour after buying a £50 card, I was able to use it to pay £50 off my tax bill and it was treated as a debit card with no fee.

How can I benefit from this?

Let’s assume that you have payments for which debit cards are accepted but credit cards or Amex cards are not.

When you buy a £50 Visa debit card, the maths looks like this:

Fee paid: £3.95

Avios points earned from Tesco: 150 Clubcard points = 360 Avios

Avios points earned from BA Premium Plus (as eg): £54 spend = 81 Avios

Total Avios points earned = 441 Avios, or 0.895p per Avios

This is not a bad deal. However, there is an extra benefit – you can use it to put additional spend through whatever American Express card you use in Tesco, which may help you hit a target for a sign-up bonus.

You would also get an even better deal if you saved the Clubcard vouchers for an Avios (or indeed Virgin Flying Club) conversion promotion.

There may be a better deal as well!

Reader Andrew emailed me to say that Tesco is now selling a different sort of Visa gift card. This one is designed exclusively for online shopping.

The pack contains an authorisation number which you input into a website after purchase. You then receive a ‘virtual’ credit card number which can be used online.

Andrew says that these cards do NOT come with a purchase fee! A £25 Visa debit card costs just £25, which you can pay with your Amex in Tesco! He said that he had managed to successfully pay part of his council tax bill online using one.

I have tried to track down one of these ‘virtual’ cards to test it, but I can’t find them. However, I have only been in a couple of Metro stores. Keep an eye out for these ‘virtual’ gift cards next time you are in Tesco.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

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:

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

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

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.

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

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.

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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.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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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.

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

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

Category

Tesco Clubcard

Comments (133)

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

  • Russell Evans says:
    30 Apr30 April 07:45

    Hi Raffles, the T’s & C’s on the Tesco website you link to still says the Visa Gift Cards are in the exclusions? Great to hear you got the deal, and would be interested to hear of other’s experiences in getting these before I go and commit to a “wedge” of £50 Visa Cards for my annual Council tax!!

    Cheers, Russell.

    ***150 Clubcard points awarded when you spend £50 in a single transaction on selected gift cards in store, excluding Tesco Gift Cards and Visa branded cards. Points will appear on your next available Clubcard Statement.

  • Squillion says:
    30 Apr30 April 07:52

    ‘Do I get Clubcard points when I buy a Visa Gift Card?If you’re a Clubcard customer, you’ll earn 150 Clubcard points for every £50 you spend in a single transaction on Branded Gift Cards (including the Visa branded Cards) at the time of purchase.’

  • Squillion says:
    30 Apr30 April 07:55

    If the points are on the receipt, it looks pretty definite to me 😉

  • Russell Evans says:
    30 Apr30 April 07:57

    Sorry chaps, hadn’t seen in that place. My eye was immediately drawn to the 3 asterisks at the bottom, that’s where I was quoting. Wasn’t doubting the legitimacy of Raffles’ post!

  • Neil says:
    30 Apr30 April 08:11

    This would be a particularly good deal if using the Amex PR Gold card as I assume you will still get the double MR points for buying in Tesco (1st year bonus) on top of the CC points.

    I have one question though. What happens when you use these cards (normal or virtual ones) for purchases greater than the £50? I imagine that in store you can simply pay over two cards but what about online? And if you buy stuff for less than £50, will you be left with several cards with only a few pounds credit left on them?

    If you buy multiple virtual ones, can they be added to an online account, effectively aggregating all of the credit onto one card?

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 08:30

      Don’t yet know how the virtual ones work.

      However, you cannot accumulate the Visa cards with the fee. This limits how you can use them online unless the merchant lets you split payment or lets you buy e-vouchers online which you then redeem (most shops let you use multiple gift cards on one purchase). Using them for my tax bill was easy as you can pay this in chunks.

      • Andrew says:
        30 Apr30 April 08:41

        You can transfer balances between the virtual cards, but there is a fee for doing so. However my council tax allows you to specify the payment amount, so I just put through a number of 25 transactions, which cleared the card balance in full.

        Also note the virtual cards cannot be used in store, only online, over the phone or mail order. I’m not clear if the number generated (when you activate the card online) is a visa credit or debit.

    • Ian says:
      30 Apr30 April 09:49

      If you use Amazon (who doesn’t?) you can spend the balance on an Amazon gift certificate, which you then credit to your own account.

  • Gordon says:
    30 Apr30 April 08:15

    Daft question but if you spend more than £50 in a single transaction do you get more points? So does £100 in a single transaction give 300 tesco or do you need to buy in multiple transactions of £50. I guess you can get round the £2000 limit by using multiple clubcards?

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 08:28

      Multiples OK, spend £100 in one go and you get 300 points.

      However … the cards you buy must be individually able to add up to £50 units! What I mean is … if you buy 5 x £20 gift cards in one go for Pizza Express, you only get 1 bonus, because the cards can only be accumulated as £60 and £40. If you bought 4 x £25 gift cards for someone, you would get 2 bonuses because the cards can be accumulated as £50 and £50.

      • Sinizter says:
        30 Apr30 April 15:01

        I have bought 5 x £20 gift cards for a 300 point bonus. I have done this regularly.

  • Jovan says:
    30 Apr30 April 08:22

    What would be interesting to see is if you can use the virtual VISA to pay [off] your AMEX spend.

    • Rob says:
      30 Apr30 April 08:27

      Which is what I intend to test today!

    • Max says:
      30 Apr30 April 08:33

      An excellent idea! Surely we can use these debit cards to settle our Credit Card bills!

      • Rome77 says:
        30 Apr30 April 08:55

        Now that would indeed be nice – I’ve tried paying my AMEX bill with prepaid cards before without success though, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high. Nevertheless, certainly worth a try!!

        • Rob says:
          30 Apr30 April 14:16

          Tried, and failed

          Rang up and tried on the phone as well, also failed

    • Sir Stamford says:
      30 Apr30 April 09:05

      A few years ago, I tried using my eBay prepaid Visa card for certain financial (i.e. non purchase) transactions such as paying off my credit card bill and it didn’t work.

      Let’s see if these work. Naturally if they work, it could be a game changer.

      Sir Stamford

  • Chris says:
    30 Apr30 April 08:40

    I bought multiple virtual ones at the tail end of last year to reach the minimum spend on my Gold Amex. A few points. Don’t buy more that £200 at a time at a Tesco till (the till cant handle more than that and just removes any extra from the transactions before you pay – you then have to go through all the receipts to figure out which ones actually got removed). Keep the receipts. I had instances where the cashier managed to scan the same card twice – which left me unknowingly with an unactivated card.
    I managed to use about £1200 of viritual cards to pay my tax bill last year (£25 at a time over a few months). No issue paying council tax, O2, Virgin Media etc – I would advise only using them where you can make a full £25 payment (so as not to leave any balance). Could NOT pay a credit card though.

    • Chris says:
      30 Apr30 April 08:45

      To add – I tried multiple credit cards from AMEX and MBNA – you cannot use the virutal debit cards to pay them off.

      • simon85 says:
        30 Apr30 April 14:25

        Some banks/building societies allow you to pay into your savings account with a debit card using online banking (Yorkshire BS for example).
        It’s worth a try. Pay the money in and then take it straight out again. Repeat ad infinitum.

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