Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Earning free Avios points with pay.com virtual Visa gift cards (Part 2)

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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.

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 – 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 – I ordered a £25 Waitrose / John Lewis voucher

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.

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.

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

Tesco Clubcard

Comments (227)

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

  • Sally says:
    16 Jul16 July 20:46

    How does the card work with Sky? The Sky website insists that you enter a card holder name? I have tried to use the Pay.com cards on several sites ie. council tax, EE and Sky and they have all been declined……Only EON accepted it so far !

    • Polly says:
      16 Jul16 July 21:00

      EE are useless, will only accept on the orange phones not ee. Sky should work, in small amounts, use whatever name is attached to the pay.com card. That’s what I do. Usually make sure I am in enough credit to cover the next bill only. They don’t like you in too much credit or they start refunding, as mentioned above, onto the cards themselves. This happened a couple of years ago to lots of us. Many councils don’t, it’s just luck if they do. Ours used to, then stopped. Try both automated phone and on line…

    • Kipto says:
      16 Jul16 July 21:25

      You put your name where it says name of cardholder.

    • TimS says:
      16 Jul16 July 21:52

      Cardholder name is whatever name you used when you set up your pay.com account.

    • Trickster says:
      18 Jul18 July 11:02

      I’ve used them on sky loads of times, just put your name in (or anything I suspect!)

  • CC says:
    17 Jul17 July 12:12

    I still top up my M&S gift card through top gift cards, just go into ‘my orders’ and repeat the last order. Can only do 3 and then it blocks you for a few days to a week, then you can buy another 3 which is more than enough to cover the food shop.

  • Simon says:
    17 Jul17 July 16:39

    You can pay use them to pay Self-Assessment, VAT, PAYE/NIC, Corporation Tax or Stamp Duty on the HMRC World Pay site. I’ve used pay.com and gospendits to pay my, my wife’s and daughter’s self assessments, my wife’s business payroll (PAYE/NIC), VAT and Corporation Tax . On 3rd July I bought a holiday home and asked my solicitor for the 11 digit Unique Transaction Reference Number so I could pay the stamp duty direct myself. This morning I’ve just finished paying the bill in pay.com and gospendits as it’s taken me two weeks to find enough gift cards at various TESCOs.

    • Polly says:
      17 Jul17 July 18:24

      Simon, that’s just a fab haul of avios for you. I was unable to get the no to pay ours two years ago, so. Issued out big time. The solicitor insisted on a bank transfer to their account. Anyway happy hunting for us all here. Got another 8 today to pay the next instalment to our alarm company. Definitely takes the edge off the utility and phone bills etc these days. Thanks all for tips on all topics, always great to share, and benefit.

    • Jonathan says:
      17 Jul17 July 21:42

      It must take ages to pay stamp duty and self assessment 50 pounds at a time!

      • Dave B says:
        18 Jul18 July 08:09

        Processed £650 to HMRC for 350 cc points per £100 , 1,120 Avios plus 4p per litre off fuel per £100( on my Tesco platinum card). Not sure it’s worth the time and effort.! unless you have a specific target to hit. Yet I’ve done it for this month’s PAYE/NI.

        • Dave B says:
          18 Jul18 July 08:29

          Plus delayed payment by 6 weeks which may be useful for some people

        • dee jay says:
          21 Jul21 July 00:48

          Curious how long it took to process the £650 payment, an hour or longer?

  • Peter Taysum says:
    18 Jul18 July 08:10

    Are there any shops you can buy vouchers, that sell ISA’s…?

  • Trickster says:
    18 Jul18 July 11:04

    Jet2Hiolidays accept pay.com cards

  • Oliver says:
    19 Jul19 July 13:49

    EDF, Sky, TV licence, giffgaff all accept them. Those are my regulars

  • Sorrelle says:
    21 Jul21 July 21:20

    Does anyone know how many 3V cards you can use to pay HMRC per day? If I did too many would it reject the payments?

  • Kuan says:
    22 Jul22 July 11:08

    Does anyone know if I buy the cards using Tesco credit card, do I get the additional 5 points per £4 spend?

    • Polly says:
      22 Jul22 July 12:24

      No extra cc pts. It’s just a flat 150cc points per £50 spend on gift cards.

    • Rob says:
      22 Jul22 July 13:04

      There is NO additional 5 points per £4.

      It is Tesco marketing spin.

      They mean you get the usual 4 points per £4 via Clubcard and an additional 1 point per £4 from the credit card. This is very, very misleading.

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

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