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Bits: mystery Supercard charges, £120 LAN Madrid to Frankfurt business class deal

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News in brief:

Supercard – the small print we missed

I covered the relaunch of Supercard recently, the payment card which lets you charge foreign currency transactions to ANY Visa or Mastercard without incurring any FX fees.

You can download the free Supercard app and order a card here.

People are now starting to use their Supercard and a strange pattern is emerging.

When transactions are made, they are logged by the app along with the exchange rate used.  A few days later, Supercard is charging a separate – smaller – amount and calling it ‘exchange rate difference’.

This is apparently the difference between the exchange rate on the day of the transaction and the date that it is cleared.  That said, I was under the impression that Mastercard locked the exchange rate on the date of transaction ….

Extra confusion comes from the fact that Supercard does not tell you which transaction these ‘exchange rate adjustments’ refer to.  If you are using it for business purposes, it will be difficult to reconcile the original transactions with the additional charges.

It isn’t clear if Supercard gives you a credit if the exchange rate moves the other way.  The market has generally been one way over the last fortnight as we all know.  One reader was told by Supercard that he had ‘saved £48’ by using Supercard on a US holiday only to find an additional £50 of charges added on as ‘exchange rate difference’.

Supercard

Fly Frankfurt to Madrid in LAN business class for £120

Last year I wrote an introductory piece on South American airline LAN. LAN is a oneworld partner so you can use Avios points to redeem for its flight from Madrid to Santiago, Chile.

It also has an impressive business class seat as you can see from that article and the photo below.

Few people know that the LAN flight from Chile does not terminate in Madrid. It carries on to Frankfurt.  This allows you to earn some British Airways tier points in style.  Why? Because you can buy tickets just for the Frankfurt to Madrid flight.

If you want to try out the very nice business class seat below, here are the current special prices available on certain days over the Summer as per the LAN website here:

Frankfurt to Madrid one-way – £120

Madrid to Frankfurt one-way – £101

Return trip – £179 irrespective of where you start

You will earn roughly 1,100 Avios points and 40 tier points for each segment. The flight is 2 hours and 40 minutes so you will get a decent amount of time to enjoy the LAN seat. Lounge access is also included.  You will be flying a Boeing 787 Dreamliner which a lot of people have not yet been able to experience.

The timings are not ideal, to be honest. The Frankfurt flight departs at 19.35 and lands in Madrid at 22.10. The Madrid to Frankfurt flight leaves at 15.10 and lands at 17.45.

There probably aren’t many HfP readers who actually need to fly from Madrid to Frankfurt, or vice versa. However, if you are after some cheap BA tier points and fancy trying out a different airline then this is a fun deal.  You can book this on the LAN website here.

If you want to do a triangular trip from the UK to Frankfurt to Madrid to the UK or vice versa, remember that some Iberia flights to Heathrow are operated with long-haul A330 aircraft with flat beds in business class. You can redeem these seats using Avios and it would be an interesting comparison to do that flight and the LAN trip as part of the same journey.

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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

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There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Category

oneworld alliance partners

Comments (148)

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

  • Peter K says:
    13 Jul13 July 13:37

    Just worked it out. They removed the Tesco option from the main “payout” page and deleted my clubcard number.

    If you find the same go into the “my profile tab” then on the right hand side click on the “payout details” tab scroll down and fill in your Tesco number again. Click, Save, then confirm you want to save it (it crashed for me the first time but was ok the second time).

    Go back to the “payout” page and Tesco is an option again.

    N.B. When I inputted my Tesco number and saved it it said I would need to wait 72hrs before a payout could be made but it let me do it straight away!

  • Singing Dwarf says:
    13 Jul13 July 14:12

    In reply to a tweet about somebody querying a 42p charge against a £28.41 transaction, @SupercardUK said “@liam_martin Hi Liam, this will be due to the FX rates changing between the time of purchase & the money leaving your account….” They go on to say “@liam_martin This is reflective of the MasterCard wholesale rate and no extra charges are being made.”

    This doesn’t really make much sense to me – the changing rate between the time of purchase & the money leaving your account? Doesn’t Supercard rely on being able to charge your underlying card at the time of the transaction? Which account are they talking about the money leaving – and why would there be a delay?

  • Kev says:
    13 Jul13 July 14:24

    I need to get 100 tier points before November to retain my silver status, doesn’t look like I’ll have any more business trips; any suggestions on what they most cost-effective way to attain these would be? (I know I just missed the bargain that was Malta unfortunately for 160TP’s)

    • guesswho2000 says:
      13 Jul13 July 14:36

      There still appears to be overnight availability LHR-HEL-LHR, which is 160 TPs, for £151 each way – you won’t get the maximum £150 discount for 15,000 Avios, it’ll now be £100, but that’s still ~£200, so £1.25/TP.

      • guesswho2000 says:
        13 Jul13 July 14:37

        To add to this, you can overnight at the Hilton Helsinki Vanta airport (which Raffles has reviewed on here somewhere, and I’ve stayed at, and can recommend) – 12,000 HH points and about €40 for cash and points, which isn’t bad value at all (providing you’ve got HHonors points, of course).

    • harry says:
      13 Jul13 July 14:37

      Try Lanzarote & Fuerteventura for £320 rtn

  • Ian says:
    13 Jul13 July 15:59

    With the pound going up, I would have expected a refund. But no. Nothing!

    I am going to refuse the charges.

    There is also no way to know which is for which purchase.

  • Alex W says:
    13 Jul13 July 16:30

    I have Curve, and recently received the Supercard. Should I assume now with these extra charges from Supercard that I shouldnt use it, and should stick to Curve instead?

  • Mr Dee says:
    13 Jul13 July 16:33

    Search for ‘Go Groopie Limited’ on google and the reviews don’t seem to be too good

  • Seb says:
    13 Jul13 July 17:18

    This is very interesting, how long is it between the purchase date and the clearing date?

    I bought a lot of things in Europe on Wed-Fri last week, pretty much the low vs the euro so looks like in theory I should be receiving a credit?

    • Rob says:
      13 Jul13 July 17:21

      I spent £1500 in New York on the Thursday of the EU vote, haven’t dared to look yet to see if it went through at $1.50 or $1.30!

      • Stu R says:
        13 Jul13 July 18:26

        I assume you needed to ‘clean up’ this thread earlier, given my comments (which were in no way derogatory to any individual) have been deleted along with quite a few others?

        • Mr Dee says:
          13 Jul13 July 18:54

          Is it not under ‘older comments’ the comment count is higher than last time I checked

          • Stu R says:
            14 Jul14 July 06:39

            Yep, and there they are – DOH! [splats palm on forehead] ….

        • Rob says:
          13 Jul13 July 19:45

          Nope!

          • Seb says:
            14 Jul14 July 13:38

            Of my purchases on 7th July, half went through at mastercards 5th and half at 6th rates, and purchases onn8th went through at 7ths rate. So your big purchase should have gone through at 1.50!

  • Zoe says:
    13 Jul13 July 18:18

    I just got an email from Supercard, card cancelled due to PIN issues, new one will be posted shortly, call if abroad or travelling shortly.
    40 mins waiting for customer services to pick up, cards going out first class tonight and tomorrow morning. If it doesn’t arrive before I go away email a copy of my credit card bill and they will pay the foreign transaction costs.
    It turns out they don’t have a service standard for picking up customers calls…

    • Frenske says:
      13 Jul13 July 18:35

      Got same email from Supercard.

      Good luck with trying to get refund from expenses made on a total different card.

      • Zoe says:
        13 Jul13 July 19:43

        I was surprised by the offer, might email and try to get it in writing, but card will most likely arrive before the weekend.

    • Al says:
      13 Jul13 July 22:51

      I got the same email. I’d love to know whether it has affected all card holders, or just ones who didn’t change their pin, or just those of us who haven’t used our cards yet. So much for the initial testing to iron out all the kinks before the grand relaunch …

      • MrHandBaggageOnly says:
        13 Jul13 July 23:21

        We have used the card, transactions showing, but didn’t change the PIN and it stopped working on Monday. Same email received today. So it’s either everyone, or just those who didn’t change the PIN.

      • Alan says:
        13 Jul13 July 23:23

        You can’t change your PIN with the new Supercard though?

        • Al says:
          14 Jul14 July 01:03

          Oh well, if it has stopped working for people who have already activated and used the card, and you can’t change the pin, then it seems like they’ve had to reissue cards for everyone. Is there anyone who hasn’t had the email (or SMS)?

          • Andy S says:
            14 Jul14 July 08:00

            I’ve not had an email or anything about needing a card replaced. I applied within a few days of it being announced here and it arrived late June. I’ve not tried changing the PIN as the default one was fairly memorable, and it did work the one time I tried it in a shop on 2nd July.

            I’m not surprised there are problems changing the PIN, my understanding is that it’s stored on the card (used as the encryption key for the card details or something) and normally has to be changed at a cash machine (as it has connections to the bank computers)

          • Genghis says:
            14 Jul14 July 08:13

            It appears though that the Supercard PIN cannot be changed

          • Alan says:
            14 Jul14 July 08:34

            Nope, not an option on this new card – Supercard have confirmed you can’t change it, which is pretty annoying!

          • Genghis says:
            14 Jul14 July 08:12

            Nor me

          • Alan says:
            14 Jul14 July 08:33

            I haven’t had the email, can still login to my account and the lack of option to change PIN is something that sadly has been present throughout this new post-beta programme…

          • Ross Williams says:
            1 Aug1 August 14:21

            Currently abroad. After around 10 days Supercard stopped working unexpectedly. PIN no longer recognised. No contact from them or prior warning. Proving to be a complete waste of time. Have never had this with any other card issued ever. Makes you wonder what the trial period was all about as it looks like it’s still ongoing.

          • Alan says:
            1 Aug1 August 14:33

            Given they’ve changed issuer (to Wirecard, same as N26 and Curve) in reality I’m not sure there’s much carry-over from their previous trial now, which makes it all a bit pointless!! Very annoying for it to stop working whilst abroad like that, the previous incarnation was much more consistent.

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