Review: MBNA’s Horizon Visa credit card – the UK’s best credit card for travelling

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• Jay says:

  31 May31 May 07:42

  Rob. What happens to the balance on the card ? I had a zero % for 3 years and took some money out from the card. Supposed to pay before 2021.

  • Andrew says:

    31 May31 May 08:24

    Essentially the background account remains the same (alhtough the account number may change), it’s just the features of the card that links to the account that changes.

    • Jay says:

      31 May31 May 10:49

      Thank you Andrew

• Martin says:

  31 May31 May 07:43

  Does anybody know how the airline handles card termination? The Miles and More card keeps miles from expiring, normally they are lost after 36 months. So if (when) MBNA pulls the plug does the clock start ticking for the entire balance?

  • David says:

    31 May31 May 08:02

    This is my concern. I only have about 16k M&M miles, so not really enough for a decent redemption, but still more than I want to throw away…

  • Andrew says:

    31 May31 May 08:08

    Although the m&m expiry rules aren’t 100% clear my reading of them is that spending on the card doesn’t reset the clock. Stop spending and you don’t get 36 months. Anything earned more than 3 years ago disappears almost immediately

    • the real harry1 says:

      31 May31 May 08:13

      Logically your contract with M&M card is entirely different to your contract with Lufthansa reward scheme. I’d be surprised if you are given any new way to keep points alive just because a route to earn points has disappeared/ is disappearing.

      You’ll have to find a new way to reset the clock, if there ever was one in the first place!

      • the real harry1 says:

        31 May31 May 08:17

        boom!

        Any other benefits?

        You earn 33% bonus miles for the first six months. This could have some value if you are a heavy spender.

        Even more important than earning miles, in my view, is that having the card and using it at least once a month stops your Miles & More miles from expiring.

        If you are a base level M&M member, your miles will expire three years after you earn them whether or not you have credited miles to your account in the meantime. This is a particularly mean and nasty expiry policy. British Airways, for example, simply requires that you credit 1 Avios to your account every three years to keep all your miles active.

        I had the M&M card for a couple of year before I gained M&M status, and it was purely for this reason – to safeguard my 100k or so miles. Note that you need to have had the card for three months before your miles are protected. I have it again at the moment and have been paying my HMRC bills with the Visa.

      • Andrew says:

        31 May31 May 10:12

        Lufthansa specifically mention on their own site that spending on one of their cards halts the expiry of miles. I think they’d struggle to completely wash their hands of any responsibilities if the UK card was withdrawn. The decent thing for them to do would be to give everyone another 36 months. That would be up to Lufthansa though and not MBNA. Whether they’ll do that is of course another matter.

    • Lloyd says:

      31 May31 May 11:06

      This is my big worry, I have over 120k M&M, my wife has about another 60k, and it appears we will lose an awful lot of miles with the loss of the credit card. We’re intending to spend a lot of them towards the end of this year, but that being said, there seems no way to check how many miles I currently have which are over 3 years old.

    • RussellH says:

      31 May31 May 11:26

      That is my feeling too. Most of my remaining ~12 000 miles have been earned in a steady trickle by doing hotel reviews on Holidaycheck.de.

      I do not expect to be offered the Horizon card by MBNA, though, as these days I just put >£5 on both the Amex and the Visa (different accounts going back 10+ years) per month to keep the miles alive.

      I see a vist to Lufthansa Worldshop looming in the near future.

• Nick says:

  31 May31 May 08:30

  Thinking aloud… but could the reason they’re trying to cling on to customers be that they need the numbers to report to the City/shareholders/lloyds directors and that actually ‘making money’ will come from better access to money markets and improved share performance rather than creaming it from customers?

  • Michael Jennings says:

    31 May31 May 09:55

    That would be my thought, too. MBNA was sold to Lloyds last year. Certainly there would have been financial projections offered to Lloyds about what the business would do and how many customers it would have etc etc going forward – possibly with penalties faced by someone somewhere if those projections were not achieved. Having the customer numbers suddenly halve because all the airline cards have closed might well be very embarrassing in the circumstances. So they make an offer to customers that makes it worth their while to keep the card.

    This works for me. I will keep the Horizon card, if they offer it to me, whereas a bog standard card I will cancel immediately.

    • Rob says:

      31 May31 May 12:11

      It’s not the numbers, it is the volume. Average spend on airline credit cards in the UK is £1000 per month. Average spend on supermarket reward cards in the UK is £600 per month. Average spend on non-reward cards is even lower. (This is per a research report I read recently but did not keep the link for, sorry.)

• Dominic says:

  31 May31 May 08:52

  Rob, just to clarify…. “free cash withdrawals abroad” literally meaning the same as using a fee-free debit card? No difference in rate (minus Visa/Mastercard variation)?

  Also, has anyone seen the letter for the Etihad MBNA card? If so – can anyone confirm when the replacement card is being sent? I’m leaving the country a few days before the 27th of July, so really need to receive the replacement before the Etihad card closes…

  Thanks!

  • Rob says:

    31 May31 May 08:53

    It means you don’t pay the £3 cash advance fee that most cards charge, plus no FX weighting.

    • Dominic says:

      31 May31 May 10:02

      Perfect, thanks for the clarification.

• Andrew says:

  31 May31 May 08:53

  Whilst the “interchange fee” is 0.3% (with a few exceptions) within Europe. I haven’t been able to pin down what the interchange fees are for, say, a UK issued card being used in the USA.

  Could it be that this particular cohort tend to use their cards outside the EEA and consequently are a fairly high income stream for LBG?

  Disappointed if my ex-BMI Amex & Visa card aren’t switched to Horizon – it would allow me to junk my Virgin Money f/x free card.

• Genghis says:

  31 May31 May 08:56

  Low free limits on ATM withdrawals though

• david devine says:

  31 May31 May 09:37

  I will never get a MBNA card again. Spent a considerable amount and was treated like a real chump. I value great customer service which MBNA don’t do

• Lemeng says:

  31 May31 May 09:37

  Rob, there is a final closing date for the Virgin Atlantic cards. I used the messaging facility online to ask and got the reply: “You’ll continue to earn miles on card purchases posted to your account until close of play the day before the conversion, 6 July 2018.” That seems pretty clear.

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