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Why earning Avios with Moneycorp at Terminal 5 is not a great idea

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I posted a couple of weeks ago that American Express Currency Exchange had resigned from its positions in Heathrow Terminal 5.  These booths, including the one in the British Airways lounge, are being replaced by Moneycorp.

The good news – if you are spending your employers money – is that Moneycorp is awarding Avios points for walk-up purchases at the rate of 1 Avios point per £1 exchanged.

The bad news is that Moneycorp is NOT giving Avios for pre-ordered currency.  American Express Currency Exchange remains the exclusive British Airways partner for pre-ordered currency.  However, it is now impossible to collect pre-ordered currency from Amex in Terminal 5.

How BA got itself into this mess I will never know.  The best way to earn Avios from pre-ordered currency is now to book yourself on an airline other than BA, since Amex Currency Exchange still has booths in the other Heathrow terminals!

You should never, ever buy currency at Heathrow as a walk-up purchase if you are spending your own money.  The rates are so poor it beggars belief.  The Travelex as you come through Terminal 5 passport control seems especially poor, with a ludicrously huge spread of around 20% IIRC.  I pity anyone who effectively pays Travelex £50 for changing £500 of $ or Euro into Sterling.

Your options for earning Avios from foreign currency are therefore (assuming you are flying from Terminal 5):

Use the Amex website (www.travelmoneynow.com/britishairways) and have currency delivered to your home or office.  Amex is still charging this as a purchase on Amex-issued Amex cards, which is a fantastic extra bonus.

Use Moneycorp at Terminal 5 as a walk-up – strictly not recommended due to the poor rates

Earn no Avios and pre-order from Travelex or Moneycorp for Terminal 5 collection.  You should still earn Heathrow Rewards points at the rate of 1 per £10 spent.

Details of BA’s new and confusing relationship with Moneycorp and Amex can be found here at ba.com.

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

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

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.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

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

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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

British Airways and Avios

Comments (23)

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

  • Tim says:
    28 Aug28 August 07:37

    There’s always the option to preorder and pick up at one of the other terminals. Then use the free connecting train to get to T5. Just remember to order for landside collection!

    • Rob says:
      28 Aug28 August 08:59

      Fair point. Not worth it for the Avios alone but potentially worth it if you need to put spend through an Amex.

  • Ray says:
    28 Aug28 August 07:56

    If you pre order for collection at T3 , can you get Heathrow Rewards on it ?

    • Tim says:
      28 Aug28 August 08:01

      Sure can: Avios from the order, points via Amex and then Heathrow Rewards on top.

      • Ray says:
        28 Aug28 August 08:42

        Do you just present you HR card on collection or can you input it on ordering along with your BAEC # ?

        • Rob says:
          28 Aug28 August 08:56

          On collection – with Amex, though, they never posted so I always retroclaimed. Not actually sure if preorders are meant to count for HR, but you always get them on a retroclaim anyway.

  • Mr Bridge says:
    28 Aug28 August 08:24

    On sunday, I bought £1026 in usd from amex via ba at a rate of $1.5114 using my amex plat card, and earnt 1026 avios and 1000 mr.
    Then my ba amex was declined by amex travelmoneynow ( more later). so i purchased £1005 in usd from fairfx.com at $1.542. This means my 2026 avios have cost $21-$22. not sure about if that how much i would want to pay, when i do a good job of earning them for fee.

    Now I had read raffles post on amex fx, and was getting frustrated at being unable to buy any more tc’s from amex.

    First bought £1026 on my partners plat..no prob.
    then tried 2 buy £2000 on my bapp declined because it was over the £650 per day cash limit, which amex informs me is standard to all bapp cards.
    next day tried to order £500 declined, amex said there was no reason this is declined, and they were unable even to see an authorization attempt.

    called travelmoneynow, and was informed that you can only purchase £2500 in any 30 day period, this limit also includes any failed attempts.
    This is not per card, this is not per person, this per address.

    I need the USD to pay hotel bill to aviod several currency exchanges in Bali.

    Can anyone advise avios earning potential transferring funds to hotel banks account

  • Thomas says:
    28 Aug28 August 08:29

    I had the very same problems for months with Amex and BA travel. Despite many attempts and calls with Amex who confirmed there was NO reason at all for this, I gave up and now go through Virgin Atlantic’s foreign exchange. First time success, no problems, Next day delivery, no cash advance fees and 1 mile per pound on Virgin and 1 MR point per pound too..

  • Alan says:
    28 Aug28 August 08:47

    For once am advantage for those of us connecting 😉 We may not get offered a POUG, but at least for some airports (eg EDI) we still have Amex and can collect airside. No HR points, but still Avios and Amex points 😛

  • Prospero says:
    28 Aug28 August 09:59

    Amex BdCs at other LHR terminals are to be replaced by Moneycorp on 31 March 2014 when Amex’s current contract expire. The good news is Amex and Moneycorp are planning on offering travelmoneynow pre-order/collection facilities at T5 by the end of this year or as soon as their compliance/risk issues are resolved.

  • Colin A-B says:
    28 Aug28 August 10:44

    Using the mail order AMEX currency service – is it possible to order GBP traveller’s cheques using the AMEX card in order to boost spend & is it counted as a purchase (as foreign currency is)?

    If so it may be worthwhile to do so despite the fee to then trigger an award & pay the TCs into my bank account to pay the AMEX bill.

  • Richie says:
    28 Aug28 August 11:34

    Hi there, compleatly off topic here . So sorry in advance but I’m looking for somewhere to go for Xmas and new year in various flight search engines. It seems that’s a oneworld or Indeed any allience search engines don’t exist. The big Internet search company’s , skyscanner etc don’t even have the eption to only select the allience you want. You would of thought someone would have invented a website like this by now. Or does it already exist and I just don’t know about it

    • Richie says:
      28 Aug28 August 12:14

      I was thinking more of when buying tickets with cash , ie. just a search engine that you could select to only show the options on your selected allience.

      • Alan says:
        28 Aug28 August 12:21

        Hi Richie – in that case you want http://www.kayak.co.uk/flights – run a search and then down the bottom of the list on the left you’ll see an option to click for restricting results to the three different airline alliances 🙂

      • Rob says:
        28 Aug28 August 12:24

        It may be too complex due to codeshares. I think oneworld and Star have different rules on getting miles from a codeshare, eg whether marketing or operating carrier counts.

    • xcalx says:
      28 Aug28 August 14:49

      I like the old version of ITA. Dosn’t split into Alliances but is easy enough to pick out airlines from the top of page.

      http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

      • Sir Stamford says:
        28 Aug28 August 21:38

        I think ITA matrix is an extremely powerful air fare search engine but where it fails, at least for the average user, is that you can’t purchase the flights you want directly. You have the added hassle of going to elsewhere to purchase them. I have read that some advanced users have been able to use the results from the ITA matrix search with Hipmunk.com to get the specific hard to find flights or combination of flights (e.g. for a mileage run).

        Incidentally, Hipmunk.com also allows for filtering by alliances.

        Sir Stamford

    • DrTravel says:
      28 Aug28 August 21:46

      Try http://www.opodo.co.uk
      Click on ‘search’ and you can choose your airline alliance from the drop-down menu on the next page (click ‘airlines’)

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