In Part 1 of this article today (click here), I looked at what pay.com cards are and how you can buy them. This part looks at how to use them.
You can, obviously, use your pay.com card anywhere online for making an online purchase of a physical item. They are not meant to work for purchases of services or the payment of bills.
If you have some money left over on a part-used pay.com card, the easiest way to redeem it is by purchasing Amazon gift e-cards. You can order Amazon gift certificates for yourself and pay them into your Amazon account. You then have a credit balance which you can work through for future purchases.
(If you do this, please consider using our Amazon affiliate link here or clicking the Amazon logo in the right-hand margin. We earn a small commission on each gift card purchase. You cannot earn cashback anywhere else for buying Amazon gift cards so you don’t lose anything.)
Here is a screenshot of one I redeemed yesterday to show that it works OK:
Here are some of the other places – not online retailers – which are known to accept pay.com cards and hopefully still work. If you have regular monthly payments to any of these companies then it is something you should take a look at:
Vodafone – if you are on direct debit, there is a time window between your bill being generated and the direct debit being taken when you can make a direct payment online. My timing is out and I cannot demonstrate this, unfortunately.
Sky – as you can see below, I successfully made a £25 payment to my account which will reduce my next direct debit:
BT, Talk Talk
EDF, Scottish & Southern, Ovo and E.ON
TV Licensing
High Street Vouchers – here is a receipt for a £25 Waitrose / John Lewis voucher which I ordered yesterday (free postage):
Parent Pay
Inland Revenue – you can pay your self-assessment income tax using pay.com cards. However, you must use the WorldPay payment site and not the Santander one. Here is a test payment I made:
Virgin Media
Apple Store e-gift cards bought direct
Council Tax – varies by local authority but they are often accepted as Visa Debit cards
Some merchants – PayPal, I think, for a start – may put a £1 block on your card when you attempt to use it as a security check. The maximum you can then pay is £24. The remaining £1 will be released within 7-10 days and can be used to buy an Amazon gift voucher.
Some merchants will also restrict the number of different card numbers that a single customer can use to 2+ in a 24 hour period. Do not expect to be able to use up 10 3V cards with the same merchant on the same day.
Please let me know if you have any updates to this list.
(Want to boost your Clubcard points? Click here and scroll down to the Clubcard logo to see our list of current promotions.)
About Head for Points
Yes it is blocked for me also since yesterday.
Using Pay.com cards for the first time today with HMRC using the worldpay login that Raffles posted. I’m getting ‘Invalid Card Number’ even though carefully quoting the 16 digit number carefully. Wonder whether the HMRC worldpay method has been pulled, or does it take a day or two for the cards (or my account as a new customer) to work?
My bad, got it working as well!
Also just for reference, they do not work for Tamworth Borough Council.
Cards should work instantly – the test transaction I did last week did.
Lloyd, wondering what you are doing to put them through successfully that I’m not?! I’ve tried everything from manually entering everything for each card (for each £25 payment) to copy pasting from an excel spreadsheet to using the google chrome auto fill feature for completing each field to speed things up but it no longer works for me. All I get is a transaction declined message when I hit the final button to process the payment.
Any insights from your success today would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.
You’ll get there!
First of all make sure you use this link that Raffles posted and not any other link:
1) https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/pay-online/self-assessment
2) Put your UTR in, should be 10 digits, sometimes with a K at the beginning or the end.
3) Make sure you are not trying to pay more than £25
4) Dont fall into the trap of using the number on the back of the card which for some reason was what I used stupidly. Make sure it is the 16 digit reference on your account on the Pay.com account.
5) Use the CV2 and end date that was emailed to you
6) Use your name and surname as registered on the Pay.com site including address.
If you are still having trouble, drop a reply and perhaps take it off line by email or something with some screen shots (but blank out the personal bits?)
Thanks for the response Lloyd, tried all of that already but still no joy for me. Glad it works for you though!
Can you buy 4 of these if one transaction and get 300 points or do you have to buy 2 at a time?
You can buy 4 at a time. If you go to customer services you can probably buy 8. The points show immediately. Always pay by amex etc and just use clubcard or tesco credit card for points only. If that’s how you work.