Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Earning free Avios points with pay.com virtual Visa gift cards (Part 1)

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Back in 2013, the easiest way to earn a lot of free Avios points or Virgin Flying Club miles was with £25 3V Virtual Visa cards – as long as your local Tesco sold them.

Why was this so great?

Firstly, as with all non-Tesco branded gift cards, you earned 150 Clubcard points for every £50-worth you bought (you cannot buy pay.com cards via this link – I am just showing you, via the small print, that this offer exists).  This meant 360 Avios or 375 Virgin miles per £50 spent.

Secondly, because Tesco accepts American Express, it was also an easy way to increase your spending if you needed to hit a sign-up bonus on a new Amex card.  Amex Gold holders also benefitted from double Membership Rewards points because, until recently when it was stopped, you earned a 100% points bonus on supermarket transactions.

Thirdly, you could use 3V cards for financial transactions.  Most blatantly, you could pay them into certain bank accounts so you got your entire £25 per card back immediately.  The only limit to the number of free Avios you could earn via this route was the number of 3V Virtual Visa cards stocked in your local Tesco.

The wheels came off the bus in December 2013 when 3V changed their rules overnight and stopped the cards being used for financial payments.

A few months later, the company behind 3V was taken over and the cards began to disappear from Tesco shelves.

A couple of months ago, they began to reappear.  It has taken me this long to write about them because I wanted to do some tests.  This meant getting my hands on some cards, which has proved tricky in Central London (too many HfP readers in one place).  Finally, up in Yorkshire over the weekend, I found a large stack in Filey of all places.  They are mainly still there if anyone is nearby.

They are very liberally available in larger Tesco stores outside Central London – you may also get lucky inside Zone 1 but don’t count on it – and you will earn 150 Clubcard points (360 Avios) for every £50 you buy.

There are some important points to note when buying pay.com cards.

Firstly, some Tesco stores are restricting purchases to two per transaction.  I was told this over the weekend but was still allowed to buy four.

Secondly, whatever the policy in your local store, you should NOT try to buy more than four in one transaction.  It is VERY common for one of the cards not to activate properly at the check-out and the problems seem to increase when more than four cards are bought.  If this happens, you have no choice but to void the entire transaction and start again.

Thirdly, without wishing to state the obvious, make sure you purchase them in multiple of £50 in order to trigger the 150 bonus points per £50 of gift card spend.   That means two or four cards per transaction.  You do NOT earn any base Clubcard points on gift card transactions.

Fourthly, you cannot buy gift cards at a self-service checkout.

Finally, you CAN buy pay.com cards with a Tesco ‘conditional spend’ coupon, ie one of the ‘£5 off your next £50 shop’ coupons that you may receive in the post.  By ‘can’ I mean that the tills will accept the coupon.  Some cashiers will refuse them, however, on the grounds that they say ‘not valid on gift card purchases’ on the back.  If you mix your pay.com cards in with some grocery shopping you have a greater chance of success.

I will look at how to spend your pay.com cards in Part 2 of this article today which you can find here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 (87)

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

  • Danksy says:
    15 Jul15 July 09:29

    I was well known in my local tesco stores (all within a 20 mile radius,,,luckily not too many in the sticks). I put through £8k worth in 2013 … It used to drive my mrs nuts .. Then NSandI stopped taking them so it became kind of pointless for me!

  • Stuart says:
    15 Jul15 July 10:01

    Funny I was in Filey back in February with my family and and cleared that same Tesco out of all £800ish of 3V cards they had at the time.

  • Dom says:
    15 Jul15 July 11:04

    How do people on here normally buy them? Do you buy loads in one transaction, keep going back for two at a time or buy load’s and ask cashier to split the transactions?

    Personally, I keep going back but at some point I feel I am arousing suspicion so stop, even though I want more.

    • mark2 says:
      15 Jul15 July 11:18

      I never buy more than four in a transaction. This is because in the past, although not recently, the till has randomly decided to give me a money off coupon up to £13 off when you spend £100.
      Also others have had problems with large purchases. This is discussed in mind-numbing detail on PaidToShop.

  • William says:
    15 Jul15 July 11:43

    Found plenty £25 vouchers in the Ealing branch…It gave me a bonus of 150 for the 2x £25 vouchers.

  • Doog1000 says:
    15 Jul15 July 12:31

    Do people find this worth the hassle? I have tried it in the last year for fuel card spend and have found it on the margin to be worth it.
    However with the fuel saver coming to an end you need to factor the time of inputting the cards into pay.com and then spending them (in my case at highstreetvouchers.com on waitrose vouchers) wonder if it is worth it for essentially a 6% return?

    • mark2 says:
      15 Jul15 July 13:10

      If you only look at the cash value of the ClubCard points then it is probably not worth the bother.
      Many of us do find it worthwhile if converted to Avios, Virgin points etc.
      A number of sources are required and ‘every little helps’.

    • Rob says:
      15 Jul15 July 13:35

      It is easier for me as I can pay the Revenue with them. However, I have not been going out of my way to pick them up – which is why it has taken me 2 months to find any!

      The extra benefit of paying the Revenue is the credit card points from Tesco as there is a fee for using a card usually, so it makes sense to use a debit card. £100 of tax paid on 4 x pay.com therefore gets 250 Avios via my old Diamond Club MasterCard (admittedly not available now) and 720 Avios via Clubcard. That is 970 Avios for a few minutes work – as long as I don’t waste time finding the cards.

      • CC says:
        15 Jul15 July 14:53

        Can you overpay HMRC? Just paid my recent bill but they have already done the usual estimated calculation to be paid by January 31st 2016, although it says at the moment ‘you have nothing to pay’

      • Simon says:
        15 Jul15 July 21:28

        Raffles: if you don’t mind me asking; How do you pay the revenue in pay.com/3v?

        I’ve tried paying Self Assessment, VAT, PAYE/NIC, Stamp Duty and Corp Tax direct on the HMRC Santander billpay site website but had no joy. I’ve bought nospendits instead to cover these bills as per your article in c.Dec’14? (Not complaining at all as I/our small business fully uses every 20p/litre off eligible fuel saving.

        I’ve found pay/3v great in paying my water, gas and electric as the suppliers I use accept them.

        I’m a property investor/developer. The last time I bought a property was 3rd July meaning £11,250 stamp duty. I ended up buying nospendits but pay.com/3v may have been doable?

        • Rob says:
          15 Jul15 July 23:10

          See comment below (and indeed my article). You do NOT use the Santander site. You use the new beta Worldpay site.

    • TimS says:
      15 Jul15 July 15:05

      £100 of pay.com cards gets me far more than 6% return.

      300 clubcard points, converted to some deals = 4x value (ie £12)
      200 MR points as 1st year Amex Gold = £1- £2 depending on how you value them
      4p/litre fuel save = approx £2 off a tank of fuel

      Therefore worth approx £16 value to me per £100 of gift cards = 16% return for 5 or 10 mins inconvenience (additional checkout time, entering info on pay.com website etc)

    • Polly says:
      15 Jul15 July 19:49

      Yes def worth the time, ESP with the present fuel reduction. But they really are totally free avios if you have the time to process them, whilst watching TV or something. I wish I had discovered them years ago. Even without the cheaper petrol, worth having. Always best to be cautious tho as Raffles continually advocates. Not to kill the golden goose.

  • Alan says:
    15 Jul15 July 13:40

    Sub-totalling for each card definitely helps things a lot – perhaps worth adding in to the article, Rob?

    On the fuel side – I’m paying about 62p/litre just now, but that’s in Australia so you need to collect lots of points first to fly out here and get it so cheap!! (supermarkets here aren’t bad for gift cards either, but sadly nothing of the 3V variety)

    • TimS says:
      15 Jul15 July 15:06

      I will never understand why Australian pump prices change depending on the day of the week!

      • Alan says:
        15 Jul15 July 15:30

        Indeed, although I still keep forgetting they’re in $ not £! 😉

      • JQ says:
        16 Jul16 July 23:19

        They lower their prices if they still have a large amount unsold and the fuel truck is about to arrive.

        Considering the AUD has fallen, 62p is far too expensive if you’re in Sydney… $1.10 for E10 if you know what you’re doing

  • Steve says:
    15 Jul15 July 16:00

    Is there an actual cost for using these cards? In other words £50 on the card = £50 spend. Like the Next gift cards that we use to pay wife’s Next bill

    • Peter K says:
      15 Jul15 July 21:23

      Yes, £50 on the cards = £50 spend. It also only costs £50 to buy them. Therefore, if you have a way to spend them you are getting free Clubcard points (+ avios/MR points from Amex spend).

  • Worzel says:
    15 Jul15 July 16:27

    We could all try ESP- but of course this would have it’s difficulties.

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

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