Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get yourself an 18 carat gold debit card

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The Royal Mint has unveiled the world’s first 18 carat gold payment card, aimed at:

“those who value high quality luxury items that make a statement.”

And, unsurprisingly, it looks quite funky as you can see above (click to enlarge).  You’ll notice that your signature is laser engraved into the front.

Raris Royal Mint gold debit card

It comes with Mastercard World Elite benefits, such as Lounge Key airport lounge access – albeit you can get the same benefits with a £15 per month Curve Metal card.

You can find out more on the Royal Mint website here.  What it doesn’t tell you is that the fee for the card is £18,750.  It is also a debit card, not a credit card, so you won’t earn any points when you use it.  On the upside, there are no foreign exchange fees and, as it is a debit card, anyone can get one ….. well, anyone happy to pay the £18,750 fee.


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:

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

Comments (146)

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

  • Keith says:

    Just been accepted for the new gold card. Will come in handy for scraping the windscreen this winter. And tickling my anus.

  • Doug says:

    So, is lounge key £15 or £20? Hsbc premier seems to have changed to £20 now

    • John says:

      Assume you also need to pay the fiver to actually get into a lounge?

    • Toilet Paper Man says:

      it’s £20.
      the mention of £15 in the article is regarding the fee for owning the Curve Metal card.

    • Joe says:

      Santander Select is still £15 a month and visits are free.

      • boi says:

        What do you mean Santander select is £15/month? I have free santander select….through salary eligibility criteria and I dont see any benefits

        • stevenhp1987 says:

          They’re talking about the Santander Select Credit Card which, to me, isn’t worth the cost.

  • Zara says:

    OT: re the article a couple of days ago on Avios bookings for the new Antalya route, has anyone successfully booked any? I keep getting an error at the final pages. TIA

    • Ben says:

      I struggled but ended up booking a return in august in the phone. I also managed to book a one way LGW to AYT on line.

    • Andrew says:

      I had issues booking an Avios ticket online too yesterday so booked on the phone. Apparently the website is erroring for lots of people so they’ve been very busy with phone bookings and waiving phone booking fees!

      Give them a call – they were very helpful yesterday.

      • Mr(s) Entitled says:

        Any thoughts on the hotels there? Reviews seem very mixed.

        • Zara says:

          Ok will try calling thanks.

          Re hotels, not a points redemption but Barut Lara has served us well with the children. For adults the Barut acanthus and cennet was very impressive.

          • B says:

            Just been looking at both of these with kids. (10 ish) Why would you recommend Lara over acanthus?

          • Zara says:

            There is very little for kids to do at acanthus. I don’t think there’s even a kids club. It seems more geared for adults. There’s a kids room which is small in my opinion by all standards of all inc resorts we’ve experienced.
            It is definitely an amazing resort though with great architecture, just nothing my kids were interested in.

            For barut Lara try to download the app too. They have a schedule of activities on their app. I am not aware of other resorts that have this but would love to know if there are other equally good resorts I can try.

          • B says:

            Thanks. Laura sounds much better.

  • John says:

    Looks like you can’t apply online so no way of finding out the T&Cs easily, but on the face of it the fee seems to cover about 25 replacement cards.

  • a270 says:

    OT: I cancelled my Amex Platinum a couple of days ago. Realsiing now that I should have made a hotel booking using their FHR programme. I can still log-in so would I still be able to use it and pay with another Amex? If yes, could someone confirm I will still get my Hilton loyalty points. Thanks

    • Andrew says:

      You’ll need to pay your bill at the hotel with your platinum card to get the FHR benefits.

    • a270 says:

      Also, where does it say the extra benefit of £100 credit or free massage etc as I can’t see anything extra for the hotel I’m looking at.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        It will normally show it on the main page are you sure it’s FHR rate and not one of the others

        You will only get points on the FHR rate not the prepay ones.

    • Adam says:

      I once paid with another Amex. No problem.

      • Harry T says:

        I paid at a hotel booked through FHR in Berlin recently – used my BAPP. They had seen my Platinum though. They said it didn’t matter how I paid, as long as I used an Amex.

  • Steve says:

    Good luck trying to cut that card in half when you cancel it…

  • Chelseafi says:

    O/T I’m considering using my Tesco points for a Hotel.com booking, seen a nice all inclusive in Corfu for family and price seems competitive as with other sites, is there a limit on what you can use I have around £900 so £2,700 after 3x, the holiday is around £4,000. Thanks

    • Andrew says:

      This article is quite old so not sure if the cap has been removed (I guess trying to convert a large amount will tell you)

      https://headforpoints.com/2017/07/10/tesco-clubcard-hotels-com-voucher/

      Also don’t forget that historically taxes needed to be paid in “real” money, not using a Tesco voucher so don’t convert too much and be left wasting CC points (again, assuming this rule hasn’t changed).

    • Benylin says:

      Someone few days ago was having issues redeeming his voucher on hotels.com, they mentioned you can’t use the voucher on all hotels. Find out if this hotel accepted the Tesco vocuhers first, try to make a dummy booking, or converting the minimum amount to make sure. That’s a LOT of voucher to risk.

    • Chelseafi says:

      Thanks guys I had missed the £250 max limit, thought there would be one. Gone are the days when we had 14 nights in Orlando with Virgin, family of 4 School holidays, when you could get 250 points on £6 wine……

  • Roger says:

    OT- Any recent experience of extending Marriott Travel Package stay certificate?
    Do they still offer 45K points back for category 1-4 stay certificate if you call before expiry?

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