Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Double Flying Club miles at American Express Currency Exchange

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Virgin Flying Club is currently offering double miles (2 miles per £1) when you exchange your foreign currency at Amex Currency Exchange at Heathrow, Edinburgh or Birmingham.  You can also get double miles at Gatwick at Moneycorp.

You can read full details of the offer here.  It ends on May 31st.

This offer is particular interesting when you remember that Amex Currency Exchange charges Amex-issued credit and charge cards as a purchase.

This means that – if you use a Platinum, Gold, Green, BA, Nectar, SPG, Costco etc Amex card to pre-order your currency – you will earn miles or points on your American Express card.  It will also count as spending towards any sign-up bonus you are working towards.

(Unfortunately, this does NOT work with MBNA or Lloyds-issued American Express cards.)

If you are flying through Heathrow, you can actually triple dip:

Earn 1 Avios per £1 or 2 Flying Club miles per £1 when you pre-order via Amex Currency Exchange

Earn 1 BAA WorldPoint for every £10 you exchange (show your card at collection, but they never post so keep your receipt and email or post it to WorldPoints)

Earn miles or points on the Amex card you use to pay


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 15,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

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

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

A generous earning rate for a free card at 0.75 points per £1 Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

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 comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

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 Virgin Points

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Comments (19)

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

  • Paul says:

    Maybe I’m being stupid, but how does one order via this deal from American Express Currency Exchange online? The only link from the VS page about this offer seems to be to MoneyCorp, and I didn’t think that was the same thing.

    Raffles, awesome site by the way.

    • Rob says:

      Good point!

      • Paul says:

        Thanks. Presumably you just show your VS flying club card when you collect then, since there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to enter this through the website?

      • Ian says:

        I’ve just ordered about a £1000 worth of Australian dollars via the Travelmoneynow site and had to choose home delivery as the airport I am flying from doesn’t have an Amex Currency presence. No way to enter an Avios or Flying Club number in the transaction and the Amex guy I spoke to said he was not aware of any such promotion

        Have I lost out on Avios or Flying club by not going via Moneycorp OR not having an Amex Currency echange on the airport?

  • Alan says:

    Sadly there’s a £350 minimum for the VS offer.

  • Harry says:

    Are you sure about currency exchange at Amex when paying with amex is counted as SPEND instead of purchase? Because I have ordered foreign currencies with amex on two separate occasions and when I talked to the staff on the phone and the staff at the counter, they both said it’ll be counted as cash advance? It could be that they are being stupid but clearly it’s better to ask someone who’s got experience on this because I really do travel a lot and this is potentially thousands of avios on my BA platinum avios credit card!!!

    • Rob says:

      Click on ‘American Express Currency Exchange’ under ‘Archives by Category’ and read the old posts. I have done this myself twice, as have others. It has NEVER gone through as a cash advance, except for the odd person who tries to use a Lloyds or MBNA Amex despite me saying that ONLY Amex-issued Amex cards work!

      If you’re still not convinced, do a small pre-order (£50) a week before travel. It will hit your Amex statement within 3 days so you will see that it is a Purchase. You can then follow up with a far bigger order and collect both at the same time.

      You should never trust the advice of an airline, hotel or similar employee over the advice of HFP readers!

      • Harry says:

        That’s exactly why I came here to ask – well those staff have never tried it themselves and I choose to believe in *experience*.

        • Simon says:

          Just made a purchase of slightly over £500 on my new SPG card and it went through ok, the transaction shows as finance on my pending transactions so looking good for it not being treated as a cash advance 🙂

  • Richard says:

    Had a quick look at the T&C’s on the Virgin link, and it reads to me that for double miles eligibilty, £350 is the minimum exchange amount if you turn up at the counter, without pre-ordering. However, if you do pre-order online, the minimum amount is £550. I would probably be exchanging the higher amount anyway, but thought it worth highlighting.

  • Johnny5a says:

    If I order off the non-BA link, can I still collect Avios?

    • Rob says:

      I think people have done it, you need to give your number when you collect. If it failed, I reckon a retroclaim would work anyway.

  • Johnny5a says:

    hmm strange – i’ve just tried my BA Premium and Platinum cards neither accepted. Phoned CS and they confirmed this …..

    • Johnny5a says:

      even more weird stuff, i phone the platinum line and said you can use any AMEX card to buy, but the strangest thing the guy said how about you call the bureau, i said find and all he had was numbers for LHR T1,3 and 4 , he said there is no bureau in T5

      • Johnny5a says:

        I’ve given up …. first attempt at buying currency this way and failed … 🙁

  • Rob says:

    It says that for every Amex card. The staff at the call centre will tell you that if you ring and ask them. The truth is that it will be treated as a purchase, as per the old posts I link in this article.

  • Ian says:

    Posted this and it appeared higher up so in case not picked up here it is again!

    I’ve just ordered about a £1000 worth of Australian dollars via the Travelmoneynow site and had to choose home delivery as the airport I am flying from doesn’t have an Amex Currency presence. No way to enter an Avios or Flying Club number in the transaction and the Amex guy I spoke to said he was not aware of any such promotion

    Have I lost out on Avios or Flying club by not going via Moneycorp OR not having an Amex Currency echange on the airport?

    • Rob says:

      You can get Avios for home delivery but you need to go via the link on ba.com. However, you get a poorer exchange rate if you do this which makes the Avios a weak deal.

      If you order via the normal website for airport collection you get a better rate and can give your Avios details at the counter, they still seem to go on.

      You could try retroclaiming via the Executive Club, you may well get them added on anyway which would have given you the best of both worlds.

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

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