Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get a 25% bonus when you convert TopCashback money to Avios points

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Cashback shopping site TopCashback is offering a 25% bonus this month if you convert your earnings to Avios.

Until 30th April, you will receive 1.25 Avios for every 1p of cashback you convert.

Be clear about the maths before you do this.  You are basically buying Avios at 0.8p each compared to taking the cash.

This IS a decent deal, and it would be hard to lose money on this basis given that HFP readers should be getting well over 1p per Avios when they redeem, but think it through.  Cash is flexible and not prone to sudden devaluation, Avios are not.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

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

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

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

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.

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 great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Comments (105)

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

  • BJ says:

    @Lady London, I’ve decided to keep mine for just that eventuality. At £1.34 and £1.62/month life is cheap.
    @Harry, was curious why my policies came in cheaper than yours, thought I was older but turns out I’m five years youngerl

  • Shoestring says:

    cheeky young whippersnapper! lol

    mine were worst, my wife is 5 years younger = cheaper, my 18YO son was cheap as chips

  • BJ says:

    Don’t trust any of them, I take the cash. Will rarely buy avios over 0.5p so the 25% bonus doesn’t even work for me.

  • Shoestring says:

    yep but you don’t have 2-3 years’ worth of Avios sitting there ready to fuel your flights, do you BJ? Aren’t you a bit earn & burn ie 1 year max?

    Not a bad situation to think you can already fund your flights on Avios for the next 3 years.

  • BJ says:

    @Harry, my earn and burn strategy is working with 2-3y insulation (could have been 4 with IB…). Currently I’m about 50k short of my 2021/22 Xmas flights, 25k in pipeline with tesco mobile and will probably open another 2x clubcard accounts.

  • Qwerty Bertie says:

    Related to your topic of buying points Rob, and that you achieved good value from those points, I again make the case for you increasing your official Hilton valuation from 0.3p per point. I might need to stay near Cardiff one weekday night later this month. I checked it last night, eliminated one of the two possibilities based on lack of parking, and at the other had a choice of an AA fully flexible rate of £84, or a 10k points option, which would give 0.84p per point value. (I would pay the cash price if I didn’t have the points.)

    • Rob says:

      If you look at 50 Hilton redemptions at random you’ll find 45 are around 0.33p. You can always do a lot better than this and if you only have a few points then it makes sense to save them for such occasions.

      Someone with 1m Hilton points (I have 1m Marriott at the moment and my wife and I have almost 1m IHG between us) will probably use them at every possible opportunity and so ends up nearer the average.

  • Qwerty Bertie says:

    I think we must be looking at it as different types of hotel user, because the proportion of higher value found by me is much higher than your 10%; I’m closer to 50%. I’m currently having to make a fair few one night weekday stays in various towns and cities around the country.

    In particular, and I expect this is common knowledge to seasoned hotel users, but I’ve only recently noticed, that Tuesday cash prices tend to rise quite high above the typical rate. Points offer great value on such days where a flexible stay needs to be booked, especially when a slightly less central option is taken to keep costs down but without it becoming too onerous with location.

    • Alan says:

      Yep, I’ve generally been able to get better value too. I’ve stuck with 0.4p for IHG/Hilton/Marriott and 0.75p for VS/AA/BA for a while. With the weakened pound I’ve found the hotel points esp valuable abroad. Had about 700k each in Hilton & IHG but still tend to not redeem unless getting at least those levels (or preferably more). Was glad I had a stash for upcoming Tokyo trip where most hotels were >£400/night. Conrad at 90k/night suddenly seemed pretty good value! (it was priced at £700+/night but definitely wouldn’t pay that!)

      • Alan says:

        Yep, I’ve found that as you say once all the taxes and carrier surcharges get added in the miles just aren’t worth quite as much, esp with reasonable business class fares being about (certainly at levels I’d be willing to pay). Hotels a much ‘cleaner’ redemption in that regard. The other thing I’ve found relaxing is only aiming to maintain Silver with BA – has meant I’ve been able to take other more direct or better value options than having to stick with BA!

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