1,000 bonus Avios with Amex Currency Exchange this Christmas

With the Christmas travel period approaching, American Express Foreign Exchange Services is running a special bonus.

When you order foreign currency via the Amex Currency Exchange website you will receive 1,000 bonus Avios when you exchange over £600.  This is in addition to the standard 1 Avios per £1.

Remember that Amex no longer has any foreign exchange booths at Heathrow so this will only work for home delivery.  The only airport offering collection is Birmingham International.

There is an extra perk with using Amex for your foreign currency:

If you charge your purchase to an Amex-issued American Express card (BA, SPG, Nectar, Gold, Green, Platinum etc) it will be treated as a purchase.  This means that you will receive points for the credit card spend and it will count towards any Amex sign-up bonus.

(Every time I write about this, someone rings Amex because this is the opposite of what Amex states in their rules and they do not believe me.  Amex tells the caller that I am wrong.  I am not!)

You can only pay with your Amex card if it is set up to undertake cash transactions, eg cash withdrawals.  If your card is new then, for security reasons, American Express may not yet have activated this function on your card.  You are also limited to the amount shown on your statement as “Available cash limit” which is usually 20% of your credit limit.

Remember that Amex offers a poorer exchange rate via the Avios website above than it does at its main website so make sure that the Avios are worth the extra cost.  These are NOT free Avios.

The ‘1000 bonus Avios’ promotion runs until 18th December.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2021)

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

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)