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Free Avios with 3V Virtual Visa – our list of places where you can use the card

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My article last week on buying the fee-free 3V Virtual Visa giftcard in Tesco has attracted a huge number of comments, over 170 at the time of writing.

(If you missed the original post, you can buy 3V Virtual Visa cards in Tesco for £50, earn 150 bonus Clubcard points – 360 Avios points – and then use the cards to pay off online bills where only debit cards are accepted.  My main 3V Virtual Visa article is here.)

I have been through all of your comments on 3V cards.  Here is a list of places where they definitely can and cannot be used online:

Works fine:

Amazon (Amazon sells online gift vouchers from 10p.  Ordering a voucher to be sent to yourself is a great way to empty your 3V card if you have a small balance left.  You can then add your gift voucher to your Amazon account as a credit, and it will be used next time you order.  If you use our Amazon link here, Head for Points gets a commission when you order a gift voucher.)

Barclaycard (works to settle Priority Club and Hilton HHonors credit cards, does not appear to work with standard Barclaycard bills)

Council tax (varies by authority, of course, but most accept debit cards these days)

EDF

E.ON

Freemans

Hargreaves Landsown

highstreetvouchers.com (lets you use the cards for a wide range of vouchers eg John Lewis)

HMRC (treated as a debit card so no 1.4% fee to pay)

Next (to pay off account balance, although you can also use Next gift cards from Tesco for this)

Npower

O2

Orange

Sky (Sky also lets you prepay online, using that balance up before recommencing your normal direct debit)

South West Water

TalkTalk

Virgin Media

With caveats:

Scottish Power (will take it but treat it as a credit card with a 1.4% fee)

TV Licence (cannot split payment, so would need to pay the £1.75 per card transfer fee to move £150 onto one 3V card)

Does not work:

American Express (to pay bill)

British Gas

MBNA credit cards (to pay bill)

Scottish Gas

Selftrade

Tesco online shopping (surprised by this, any other reports?)

Tesco savings account (when depositing using a debit card)

Please continue to add your own experiences with utility companies, credit card companies etc.  We know that they should work as ‘normal’ with online retailers so that is less important unless there is a special tweak involved.  Other ideas apart from Amazon for cashing out very small remaining balances are also welcome.

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

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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

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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

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The Platinum Card from American Express

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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.

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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 (129)

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

  • Andy says:
    11 May11 May 09:20

    I thought that the max you could activate in 1 year was £1,300? And the max you could redeem was £650 without having to supply added money laundering info to them.

    • Rob says:
      11 May11 May 09:45

      Presumably you can register them under various names – the tax people, at least, don’t care whose name the card is in, I can vouch for that.

      • Michael says:
        13 May13 May 23:45

        Paid £500 towards paye/nic tonight – then got message saying couldn’t process payment !! Is there a daily limit on amount of transactions to Hmrc – that was 20x£25 to one account – ill call tomorrow to check but anyone had this happen to them ??

    • Gordon says:
      11 May11 May 15:38

      I think the max is £1650 without money laundering info, which i have completed and fully spent. Not sure what the £650 is unless it relates to bank refunds. As raffles says, just do it in a family members name with their agreement above this.

  • Gordon says:
    11 May11 May 15:47

    Has anyone seen evidence of the cards being restocked? I have cleared the shelves in 6 tesco stores over the last 12 days and none have been restocked. They have simply split the visa cards with the fee across the free hooks.

    • Londonbus says:
      11 May11 May 18:34

      They have restocked at Tesco Brent Park.

      • Max says:
        16 May16 May 06:13

        Do they stack these on the gift cards rack in Tesco Brent Park as I couldn’t see any?

    • Squillion says:
      11 May11 May 18:42

      Yep I’ve seen evidence but down our way restocking seems to be on a 2-3 week cycle.

  • tangey says:
    11 May11 May 23:38

    Charles Stanley (share trading), seems to accept these, certainly took the one that I’ve tried. Basically means I can put all these v3 into my share trading account, then request the money, all at no charge.

    Their card handler is SagePay, so that *might* indicate that anyone that uses sagepay will take them.

  • Ian says:
    12 May12 May 18:06

    I’ve just put 2 x £25 through my Hilton Credit card and it then came up with a message “Sorry but you’ve reached the limit of your debit card payments”. Not sure if this is a daily limit – will try again tomorrow

    Not quite the end of the world as I can use some of the other places eg council tax, HMRC and Sky but paying Hilton was my preferred option as I intended to pay council tax with this card and then pay that bill with 3V card. That way I would have got HHonors, AMEX MR and Tesco points!

    • Louie says:
      13 May13 May 09:43

      I asked Barclaycard about this (re Priority Club visa, but no doubt the same applies to the Hilton one) and got the following reply:

      “We’re sorry you’ve been inconvenienced as a result of the limitations regarding debit card payments. We are constantly looking at ways to improve the security of both our customers and the Priority Club Rewards Visa. One of the ways we look to do this is to place some limits on the debit card payments you can make in a month. At present these are limited to no more than 5 payments or 2 different cards within a 30 day period, up to a maximum of £3000 in one transaction. If our customers reach these limits we will allow an alternative payment method from the information on the back of your statement or the online FAQ facility”.

      So in other words, you can only pay £50 per month this way.

      • BP says:
        13 May13 May 13:36

        Came to settle my hhonors card today – to confirm that the same applies with that card. It states in the terms and conditions that you can only make up to 2 online payments per month. Unfortunately not the golden goose i had hoped for!

  • Anon says:
    12 May12 May 19:54

    Thank you for your useful site!

    To add to your list, T-Mobile did not work for me – it said card may be issued by non-UK bank.

    How would Neteller be viewed, do we think? It says you cannot use the card for gambling sites but would this work?

    Ideally looking for a way to get this these consolidated back to being cash!

    Anon

  • Anon says:
    12 May12 May 20:22

    Ignore me about Neteller – 1.75% fee even if it did work.

    Anon

  • GingerBread says:
    13 May13 May 22:39

    RyanAir for ‘extras’ via Manage My Booking worked.

    Interesting they have a 3V Visa Prepaid Vouchers selection on card selection that worked fine – my First attempt via Visa Debit/Delta failed.

  • Andy says:
    13 May13 May 22:52

    Works with First Utility. You will get the option to pay some of your bill in your profile. When you do the first one the option disappears, you have to phone up to get them to take more of the vouchers.

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