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EXCLUSIVE: 40,000 Avios or miles bonus with new HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

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HSBC, as I have mentioned a couple of times on Head for Points in the past, has been planning to bring its World Elite Mastercard product to the UK for some time.  Recent changes to the terms and conditions of HSBC Premier made this clear.

The product is now set to launch – and it sounds quite exciting.

I believe that the information below is correct.  However, it has not come directly from HSBC so it may not be 100% complete.  Details were not on the HSBC website as of last night.

Before I come onto the benefits, let me remind you how HSBC Premier credit cards work if you take airline miles.  You need 2 HSBC Premier card points to exchange for either 1 Avios, 1 Cathay Pacific mile, 1 Singapore Airlines mile or 1 Etihad Guest mile.

This is what the new HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard will offer, I understand:

40,000 points (20,000 miles) for signing up and spending £2,000 within 3 months

40,000 points (20,000 miles) for spending £12,000 in your first 12 months – you only receive these points at the end of the first year, however quickly you spend £12,000

2 points (1 mile) for every £1 you spend – this makes it by far the best Avios Mastercard or Visa product

4 points (2 miles) for every £1 you spend outside the UK

There are other interesting benefits on top which come with ALL World Elite Mastercard products issued in the UK:

Airport lounge access via LoungeKey

Travel insurance (not clear how comprehensive, possibly refers to the usual HSBC Premier insurance)

Travel status benefits:  

  • Abercrombie & Kent VIP Travel
  • Fairmont Hotels and Resorts VIP Guest Status
  • Leading Hotels of the World free Leaders Club membership (save $150)
  • Hertz #1 Club Gold
  • Sixt – ‘exclusive benefits’
  • Raffles Hotels and Resorts VIP Guest Status
  • Swissotel Hotels and Resorts VIP Guest Status
  • Starwood 3-4-2 deal
  • Small Luxury Hotels of the World 3-4-2 deal

What is annual fee?

It will be £195 plus £60 for any supplementary cardholders.

What are the eligibility criteria?

HSBC Premier has tough eligibility criteria.  See here and click on the Eligibility button to see the details.

As well as opening a HSBC Premier current account, you must ALSO have £50,000 invested with HSBC, either in a savings account or via an investment product.

Alternatively, if you earn over £100,000, you qualify if you just have a HSBC mortgage or anyinvestment or insurance product.  HSBC has been known to waive the income criteria if you are on a career path which should see you earning this sort of money within a few years.

I’m not sure what the minimum investment is in an ‘investment product’ but I’m sure you could find something which would accept £1,000 or so.  They may even treat ISA’s or fixed rate bonds as ‘investment products’ – the definition is not clear online.  Some readers have been told different things by different branches.

Is the card worth getting?

I still have a HSBC Premier account from my days working for the group, more than a decade ago.

I will probably get this card although it is a more marginal call.  I still have my BMI Diamond Club Mastercard which earns 2.5 Avios per £1.  Spending £12,000 on that card earns me 30,000 Avios.

I would receive 52,000 Avios from putting £12,000 through this new card.  The extra 22,000 Avios would justify the £195 fee – just – and I may get some value from the other travel benefits.

For anyone who doesn’t have a legacy BMI Mastercard and has HSBC Premier, this is a very good deal.  You are looking at 52,000 Avios for a £195 card fee and £12,000 of spending within a year.

One thing to note though.  If you were thinking of running up the £12,000 via tax payments, remember that a World Elite Mastercard may have higher interchange fees than a standard Mastercard.  This is HMRC’s list of non-standard Mastercard fees:

Mastercard World Premium Credit Card 0.374%
Mastercard Signia Premium Credit Card 0.606%
Mastercard Elite Premium Credit Card 0.606%

So, what is the HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard?  Is it 0.374% or 0.606%?  Even at 0.606%, however, you would be ‘buying’ your airline miles cheaply.

I will about the card again when I have the official details which will hopefully be in the next day or so.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

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

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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.

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

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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

British Airways and Avios, Etihad and Etihad Guest, HSBC Premier Mastercard

Comments (84)

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

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    19 May19 May 09:33

    I’m about 95% sure that it will be 0.606%

    You can see more detail on the world elite benefits here: http://www.mastercard.co.uk/world-elite-privileges.html

    A bin like 530418 will let you in.

  • Rob says:
    19 May19 May 09:43

    Before anyone comments, I let this through because Karhoo asked me to plug them and I didn’t, so this is compensation for them 🙂

    • Dave says:
      19 May19 May 11:54

      Thank you Raffles!

      Also able to book Executive AddisonLea vehicles and Black Cabs.
      Great tool for looking up prices and booking in advance.

      cheers

  • S. david says:
    19 May19 May 10:30

    I have HSBC premier account and will definitely stay away from this

    12k is simply ridiculous. They’re living in a parallel world. Good luck signing up enough people

    Simply think about it: you would spend approx 16k on spg, ba and gold amex just to churn for sign up and 2-4-1. Lets say you spend another 5k on lloyds for spending abroad. If you’re single and lets say you spend 3k a month or 36k a year for non credit card spending, mainly rent, mortgage, bills, cash (I know it’s totally arbitrary but for sake of calculation). That’s already 57k. Add 12k, that makes 69k total min spending or lets say 120k pre tax (again just estimate). I haven’t included any savings, capital purchase, healthcare, emergency, flight tickets where credit card gives poor value so you pay with debit card.. etc. I wonder how many people they can find making much more than this and willing to commit to this card. Obviously for families with multiple earners it’s a different situation

    This is different from amex. You only commit 3k or so per card and you can keep churning or wait depending on how much you make or spend. You dont commit to 12k

    • Rob says:
      19 May19 May 11:03

      HSBC will do very nicely with this card. Remember that you can also redeem points for gift vouchers etc. It is free money if you pay a lot of tax with it – 1% back for a 0.6% fee plus 56 days max free credit.

    • Brian says:
      19 May19 May 11:50

      There are lots of heavy spenders out there. Think of the Hong Kong chap who spent 20 odd million on a diamond for his daughter using his credit card…

      And the 12K for the bonus is a one-off – you won’t get the bonus every year, so there is no need to spend the 12K every year.

      • S. david says:
        19 May19 May 18:04

        See your point, but doubt they can justify marketing this card with random zillionnaires here and there. Probably need to address wider upper-middle segment to make it work?

        Yes, you dont need to spend 12k every year, which makes it obvious that as soon as your sign up bonus is triggered, you will cut the card in 8 pieces and never use it again. If anyone is paying the full fee for subsequent years, they must really love the benefits, which to me are not super attractive

        Rob, to your point, to pay a lot of tax with it, you need to be self employed. Doesnt work for random 100k earnings guy who pay maybe 1-2k tax on self assessment

        Separately Rob, do you think card is worth keeping after 12k?

        • DV says:
          19 May19 May 18:59

          The benefits are attractively priced compared to the Amex Plat, subject to the details.

        • Rob says:
          19 May19 May 21:23

          No, not unless the benefits are worth £195 eg lounge access.

  • Alexey says:
    19 May19 May 11:05

    I have premier card and would be interesting to see details what will happen for existing holders …

    in general what would be interesting for me is lounge access … if I can get it in compairable form to PP for 195 that better than Amex Plat …

    Not sure what the point of insurance – we get it anyway from premier account already even without credit card …

  • Stuart Ross says:
    19 May19 May 11:17

    O/T Been using Curve since late April. Since switching my default card from my Nectar Amex to my British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card, I have only now noticed that each of the 14 Curve transactions made to the BA Amex have been charged a Non-Sterling Tranaaction Fee. It seems that my BA Amex is being treated as a US-based card, which it is not.

    Worth checking the on-line details of the Curve transactions on your Amex. No response after 3 days from Curve.

    • Brian W says:
      19 May19 May 22:32

      Stuart,

      I had this exact problem with my BAPP. I tried a similar transaction on my Lloyds Premier Amex and it charged it in GBP so I supplied screenshots of each BAPP transaction I had made in USD’s via twitter DM and got a refund from them for the FX fee charged by Amex.

      They (Curve) said that their system wrongly assigned my BAPP as a USD card. They explained they knew about the issue and the next version of the iOS app would correct this.

      It has since been updated (about a week ago from memory) and I asked for clarification if it was fixed, they confirmed is has been, although I haven’t tested it yet. You can check the setting of each card (i.e. the home currency of the card in the app and change it if it is wrong).

      I would persist publicly on Twitter, they seem to act quicker if you make a fuss that everyone can see.

      Other than this the card has been working well for me, channelling a lot of personal and business spend that I used to make on my Lloyds Premier MC through my BAPP.

      Hope this helps.

  • pointsarb says:
    19 May19 May 11:23

    @ Stuart Ross

    I suspect that this has happened as your default currency for your BAPP within the Curve app is USD so you just need to go in and change it to GPB and you’ll be sorted I think.

    This tripped me up too on another card but luckily I managed to fix it after only a couple of transactions.

    • Singing Dwarf says:
      19 May19 May 13:28

      Yes, but the three days and no response is not looking promising.

  • harry says:
    19 May19 May 12:00

    Dave – you should perhaps make clear that the £20 codes are in addition to the £10 DAVID011.

    How do people email you to get the £20 codes?

    Is SHAOH544 (£10) stackable alongside DAVID011 – making £40 total discount, probably spread over 3 journeys?

    • harry says:
      19 May19 May 12:07

      btw Not that many people read these footnotes compared to the number reading the day’s articles. I don’t think anybody would raise any objection to you getting together & splitting a £20 code with HFP, the site doesn’t run on thin air

      • Callum says:
        19 May19 May 13:38

        Unless they’re being very dishonest they don’t seem to be connected to Karhoo, so I doubt Raffles would want to share affiliate income with them when he could just get it for himself (though chose not to for whatever reason).

        I wouldn’t imagine it’s stackable, they’re both just referral codes people are sharing to try and get commission.

        • harry says:
          19 May19 May 14:10

          My reading is that Dave works for Karhoo

          • Dave says:
            19 May19 May 14:56

            Hi – I don’t work for Karhoo in any capacity.

            The code that I can share now is
            KARHOOLOVE3 – use and ride by midnight, Sunday 22nd May
            This is stackable – Use this in addition to DAVID011 for £30 off.

          • Genghis says:
            19 May19 May 15:16

            Dave – do you benefit personally from people using your code? If so, I think it should be disclosed.

            I’m happy to give Amex referrals btw… 🙂 lol

  • David says:
    19 May19 May 14:05

    Off topic, but anyone used their Curve card for Uber? It won’t accept my card at all, Uber say my “bank” is rejecting it and Curve say there’s no reason why Uber should reject it.

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