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The Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards bite the dust …. what now?

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The Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards were withdrawn to new online applicants on Wednesday.

Before we go on, there is one important point to make clear.  According to a statement Lloyds gave to me yesterday:

“American Express is discontinuing its existing UK licensing arrangements. As a result, we are no longer accepting applications for American Express credit cards online. Applications in branch and by phone will continue to be accepted for a period.”

If you had been planning to get yourself a Lloyds Avios Rewards credit – and there are good reasons for doing so, as I will remind you below – you should still be able to get one by calling or visiting your local branch.

Full details of the card benefits are on the Avios website here.

Why did this happen?

You can’t say you weren’t warned.

American Express announced its intention to withdrew its licences to Lloyds, Barclays, MBNA and TSB to issue Amex-branded credit cards a couple of years.

Since then, all of the third-party Amex-branded cards have been closed.  Except this one.  Lloyds Choice Rewards, Lloyds Premier Avios, TSB Avios, a couple of Barclays products, Virgin Flying Club White, Virgin Flying Club Black, United Airlines, American Airlines, Lufthansa Miles & More, Etihad Guest, Emirates Skywards, Emirates Skywards Elite ….. all withdrawn.

Only the Lloyds Avios Rewards cards hung on,  Arsene Wenger style.  I always assumed that they had received a stay of execution because of the British Airways relationship with American Express.

There is a second reason why the cards had no future.

The other big change on the way is the ‘one Avios’ IT platform.  Rather like Miles & More or Flying Blue, within a few months all of your Avios activity will take place on the avios.com website.  As far as I understand it, you will NOT use ba.com for any Avios-related tasks.

As part of this, avios.com will cease to exist in its current form.  There will not be two standalone UK Avios schemes, ie avios.com and British Airways Executive Club.   BAEC will effectively take over the avios.com platform.

Whilst they could have muddled through, in reality there was no place for two sets of Avios credit cards under this arrangement, given that there will only be one Avios scheme.

It’s a shame to see the Lloyds Avios Rewards cards go

I was originally very sceptical about the Lloyds Avios Rewards cards, mainly due to the pathetic 0.2 Avios per £1 earning rate on the Mastercard.  Although, from Day 1, I was very vocal about how impressed I was with the 0% foreign exchange fee on offer.

That was also a problem in the end.  Foreign exchange fees are the major source of income in the new world of 0.3% interchange fees for cards where most holders are too wealthy to pay interest.

Two things changed my mind:

It soon became clear that the upgrade voucher, earned for spending £7000 per year on the card, was proving very popular with solo travellers.  As a middle aged guy with a family, I had forgotten how much the 20-year old me would have valued the upgrade voucher and how I would have struggled to use the 2-4-1.

The Avios changes in 2015, which widened the points gap between Club World and World Traveller Plus redemptions, made the upgrade voucher more valuable.

I suppose I should also mention that I earned 1.1 million Avios from a crazy 1,000% bonus promotion that Lloyds TSB ran on the old Avios Duo card back in 2012.  That story is here.  They really didn’t know what they were doing …..

What now?

If you have the Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards, they should continue to operate for a while.  At some point you will presumably be transitioned to a standard Lloyds credit card.

In the medium term, it would be logical to see British Airways drop American Express and launch a Mastercard / Visa product.  This could be with Lloyds or it could be with someone else.  With the fees on the BA Amex card now capped following the recent EU court judgement, BA should see the value in a switch.  They will get similar fees from Mastercard / Visa but billings will rise sharply due to the wider acceptance compared with Amex.

And then we have the new Virgin Atlantic credit cards which are coming soon …..

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

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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:

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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

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American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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The Platinum Card from American Express

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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:

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American Express Business Platinum

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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

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (177)

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

  • JPR says:
    2 Mar2 March 07:49

    If Lloyd’s are accepting applications in branch, they surely plan on keeping it going for a while? 6 months? A year?

    • Grimz says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:32

      I hope so, I got mine online on Tuesday night! The upgrade voucher is valuable for a family of 3.

    • Rob says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:48

      We’re talking days, not months, I think. What sort of weird contract would Amex have given them which bans online sales but allows phone / branch?

      • Lady London says:
        2 Mar2 March 13:30

        There will be a processing time allowed by the contract for those non-online methods. As you say it will be days rather than much more than a week.

  • shd says:
    2 Mar2 March 07:51

    OT: is there any chance of another Billhop sign-up/discount code?

    Can you only use Billshop to pay to UK-based bank accounts, or is it also possible to settle invoices in Euros via an IBAN/BIC ?

    • Jonathan says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:24

      BillHop have just launched the referral scheme so i dont see a discount code coming along anytime soon. But if referred you get £250 fee free and the referrer gets £500. Rob has first dibs are referrals but if not let me know and i can send you a code across.

      Yes, you can pay EU (SEPA) banks in Euros looking at the screen when i just logged in.

      • Rob says:
        2 Mar2 March 08:44

        I don’t have a code, feel free to share yours.

        We are thinking about a promo linked to council tax bills in April but it will be a while off if at all.

  • Neil says:
    2 Mar2 March 07:55

    As all reference to this card online has been removed, does anyone have the number to call if you want to apply for it over the phone??

  • Graham Walsh says:
    2 Mar2 March 08:11

    I opened this card in December, so 3 months in and spent £6k on it. Holding off hitting the £7k for the voucher, just thinking if I should just spend and trigger it within the next month or so.

    • Pbdj says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:29

      You only have to book your flight within a year of triggering the voucher, so unless 2 years isn’t enough time to build up your Avios (as in one year you could book a flight 355 days out), I’d trigger the voucher.

    • Rob says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:46

      You’re fine for a while I’m sure.

  • vand says:
    2 Mar2 March 08:14

    Likewise i’ve had about £350 of compensation and an extra upgrade voucher, and extra avios. So the initial frustrations with the card certainly paid off!

  • pauldb says:
    2 Mar2 March 08:22

    I have always thought the MC earning benefit is complex and under appreciated. There are plenty of Amex cards for you Amex spend. If you just use the Lloyds card for your MC spend (and maybe forex) the voucher is a great return on £7000 MC spend, easily 3% is used well.

    • bill says:
      2 Mar2 March 09:48

      I totally forgot that the MC spend counted towards the £7k spend. I triggered my voucher within one month of opening the Lloyds account, whereas my BAPP 10k spend took me about 8 months to trigger

  • Adam says:
    2 Mar2 March 08:22

    Anyone have any idea what will happen to Iberia plus miles when they move to one avios platform?

    • Rob says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:45

      One platform, one account, one set of partners across all airlines. However I think stage is just BA.

      • pauldb says:
        2 Mar2 March 08:51

        There’s a fundamental difference between Household accounts between BAEC and avios.com. Wonder which model will carry through. BAEC needs individual TP accrual but not avios accrual.

        • Alan says:
          2 Mar2 March 09:35

          Agreed – having the different setups has been very handy!

      • Mikeact says:
        2 Mar2 March 09:07

        Avios SA ?

        • Lady London says:
          2 Mar2 March 13:34

          Could be dropped. Didn’t they do spmething like that to the Australians?

          • Rob says:
            2 Mar2 March 13:48

            Avios SA continues but you may see the ditching of localised offers. Miles & More has no trouble operating across Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland and Croatia.

        • Callum says:
          2 Mar2 March 19:23

          Lady London – they did, but Australia doesn’t have a BA branded airline that uses Avios as it’s reward scheme like South Africa does.

      • RussellH says:
        2 Mar2 March 10:53

        So presumably when Iberia goes to the avios platform, the various schemes where you do much better out of Iberia than out of BA or Avios (e-Rewards, Accor, Hilton) will die?

      • RussellH says:
        2 Mar2 March 11:01

        My partner + I have our own BAEC a/c, plus we have a shared avios.com a/c; I also have an Iberia Plus a/c – primarily to take advantage of the improved e-Rewards deal. Then I have an unused AerClub a/c (never got the sign-up bonus) which is just in my name, but seems to have access to all our avios.com avios, not just the ones earned under my avios number.

        The potential for cock-ups seems quite high..

  • Mark says:
    2 Mar2 March 08:22

    Like rob, I benefitted from about 750,000 Avios on the old card. Was gutted to find that our wedding venue in ny didn’t take Amex though! I would have earned an extra 250,000 Avios from that one transaction!!

    • Anna says:
      2 Mar2 March 08:52

      I would have put my foot down and found another venue ????

    • Lady London says:
      2 Mar2 March 13:37

      I’d have thought about whether I wanted to get married at all! 🙂

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