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Get £45 for free if you have a Monese bank account

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Monese is the online banking app which has a partnership with Avios – albeit that the partnership has not gone much further, so far, than letting you view your Avios balance alongside your financial balance.

I know that 2,000 HfP readers have a Monese account following our recent competition.  If you didn’t win, here is £45 as compensation.

If you don’t already have a Monese account, you can use my refer-a-friend code of ROBE820.  You will receive a £5 credit plus a further £15 when you’ve spent £500 on your card.  I think that is how it works – it doesn’t actually tell me anywhere what you get ….

If you are reading this on your phone, the download link is here.

How to get your free £45

As a Black Friday offer, Monese has two offers running:

  • Buy a £50 shopping gift card for £35
  • Buy a £100 shopping gift card for £70

By far the easiest option is to buy an Amazon gift card and add it to your Amazon account for future use (it is valid for 10 years).

Here is a step by step guide to how to do it.  This is based on the £100 gift card but the process is the same for the £50 card.  You can buy one of each per Monese account.

As you can see from the time stamps on the screenshots, it only took me four minutes to buy and redeem each gift card – and it would have been quicker if I wasn’t taking and uploading screenshots!

If the offer comes up as ‘expired’, it isn’t.  It is just overload on the system.  I got ‘expired’ early on Friday but was then able to purchase successfully at lunchtime.  If GIFT100 fails for the £100 gift card, you may find that GIFT50 still works, according to readers.

Step 1:  Make sure you have £70 in your Monese account

I withdrew £70 from my linked HSBC account and it arrived instantly:

Monese gift card promotion

Step 2:  Go to ‘Promotions’, which is under the menu in the top left corner (the ‘head’ icon)

Step 3:  Add the code ‘GIFT100’ (or ‘GIFT50’ for the £50 card):

…. which will lead you to this screen:

Monese gift card promotion

Step 4:  Click on your messages (the ‘bell’ in the top right corner)

You can then activate your gift card.

Step 5:  Choose the gift card you want

You can choose from Amazon, Argos, Asda, Caffe Nero, Cineworld, Costa, Currys ….. and that is just A-C!  For an easy life, take an Amazon gift card (valid for 10 years):

Monese gift card promotion

Step 6:  Click here to go to the page of the amazon.co.uk where you redeem electronic gift cards

And that’s it.  £30 saved.

If you bought the £100 gift card, you can repeat the process with code GIFT50 and pay £35 for a £50 gift card.

I hope the free £45 makes up for not winning our Monese competition.

If you’re not already a Monese account holder, you can download the app here.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2025 update

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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.

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British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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Earning miles and points from small business cards

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Category

General

Comments (178)

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

  • Boi says:
    30 Nov30 November 06:41

    OT: do I need a physical Monese card to top up at post office/pay point?

  • Shoestring says:
    30 Nov30 November 07:02

    apparently the £50 code was working at 2am

    Monese are aware of delays & problems on their site yesterday – so there’s a decent chance that this alone will make them decide to release a new tranche of £50 and £100 codes

  • Will says:
    30 Nov30 November 07:06

    Curve heading downhill and now Monese promotions after the deal expires Keep it clean Rob.

    • Johnny5a says:
      30 Nov30 November 07:59

      Curve is still working fine, not sure of the issue.
      The offers were available yesterday, plus this offer went viral on HotUKDeals as well so it’s entirely possible the quota has all gone. As far as I know Rob (he’s said this in the past) queues each article up on autosend, I personally don’t think he’s at the computer at 5am posting these out.

      Anyway follow the facebook page, as this article was up yesterday

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:
      30 Nov30 November 08:00

      Hardly Robs fault that Curve are a shambles. Buyer beware.

      • Peter K says:
        30 Nov30 November 08:51

        +1
        And, as posted above somewhere, it’s not like your money is trapped in Monese if you topped it up. You can transfer it back into your bank account at any time!

    • Doug M says:
      30 Nov30 November 10:25

      Boohoo, I didn’t get it, it’s not fair, this site is rubbish. What a lot of whinging ice creams some of these people are.

  • martin Kay says:
    30 Nov30 November 07:10

    The codes were expired on publication of this email. Was this just a ruse to get a £5 referral?

    • Chas says:
      30 Nov30 November 08:36

      I used the £50 code successfully 30+ mins after publication of this article, although the £100 code had been used by then. Rob can’t control how quickly something goes viral and may therefore run out.

      This is yet another example of where Rob has genuinely saved his readers money (in fact he’s given them cold hard cash in this instance unless you never spend anything at Amazon). Your comments are rude and just strike me as someone who is jealous that they didn’t action the advise in time.

      • Chas says:
        30 Nov30 November 08:45

        Sorry Martin Kay – my comment was in reply to Martin Davis further down the page…. 🤦🏻‍♂️

      • Eman says:
        30 Nov30 November 10:16

        Cold hard cash for himself through all the sign-ups

        • Shoestring says:
          30 Nov30 November 10:23

          hope so! HFP doesn’t run on air & I quite like getting all the tips & news

        • xcalx says:
          30 Nov30 November 10:50

          Which is great news. Keeps HFP free.

        • Rob says:
          30 Nov30 November 11:36

          Not getting rich on £5 a time (assuming you don’t spend the £500) 🙂 A reminder that our overheads exceed £100,000 pa (1 x f/t employee, 1 x p/t employee, 1 x p/t employee on 100% maternity pay, office, general costs) before I get a penny.

          • @mkcol says:
            30 Nov30 November 15:52

            Wow!
            Sadly reality will never shut the whiners up. They clearly think you have one of those magic money trees.

  • Eman says:
    30 Nov30 November 07:30

    Both expired since yesterday. Wasted a lot of time trying. Then found out that referrer gets £20 for each new sign up!! This is click bait!!

    • Johnny5a says:
      30 Nov30 November 07:56

      So do you get £20 – £5 after first transaction and £15 after you’ve spent £500.

      Helps to read the article!

      • Peter K says:
        30 Nov30 November 08:53

        Yeah, so much vitriol when no wrong was done.

        • Johnny5a says:
          30 Nov30 November 09:06

          I bet during the good times and good articles – people don’t say Thank You! as soon as something popular goes wrong and doesn’t go their way – it’s like the world is ending

    • Doug M says:
      30 Nov30 November 10:35

      You mean someone is running a website for gain, they’ve monetised the Internet? This is shocking, you must immediately report them to the appropriate authority.

  • Martin Davis says:
    30 Nov30 November 07:42

    Both expired. Unimpressive. Please don’t waste my time with dud promotions.

    • The Streets says:
      30 Nov30 November 08:34

      How much of your time was really wasted? Think of the amount of wasted time you have just created for people who have to read this pointless comment

      • Chas says:
        30 Nov30 November 08:46

        +1 see my comment above (reply erroneously put against Martin Kay’s comment….)

    • Doug M says:
      30 Nov30 November 10:40

      If I remember, you got £5 for signing up, and another £15 if spend £500. That’s way better than any deposit interest rate. Then, there’s every chance that these codes will work again at some point in the next day or two. The £100 didn’t work for me yesterday, then an hour later it did. I got £150 worth of useful gift cards for £105. Good luck to Rob if he made a few quid out of referrals.

  • Shoestring says:
    30 Nov30 November 08:03

    New sign ups – Pablo’s code – 1MONTHFREE gives you free Premium plan for 30 days, then automatically reverts to the Simple plan. This allows you to get the debit card for free (normally £4.95) which allows you to top up in store and use your Monese a/c more usefully – you also access a free virtual debit card for immediate online use.

  • Cls says:
    30 Nov30 November 08:09

    Avios millionaire winners already on Monese site from 26 November.

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

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