Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get £45 for free if you have a Monese bank account (only 4 minutes needed)

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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:

Monese gift card promotion

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

Enter your code:

Monese gift card promotion

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.

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Category

General

Comments (182)

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

  • Craig says:
    30 Nov30 November 10:33

    I can’t grumble about the expired code, I managed to get the £50 one and now have £70 sitting in my Monese account which I can withdraw at any time.

  • sarah gorman says:
    30 Nov30 November 11:11

    Both codes seem to have expired unfortuantely

  • Mikeact says:
    30 Nov30 November 11:17

    I feel it may be time to run an update an update on Monese….bits I’ve been reading in the press and more changes to their T’s and C’s is making me a little nervous.

    • Boi says:
      30 Nov30 November 11:36

      So is it treated like a bank account/debit card and I can pay HH Barclaycard which only accepts proper banks?
      Just trying to find a home for the balance on the account

      • Rob says:
        30 Nov30 November 12:06

        Just withdraw it back to your current account.

      • mark2 says:
        30 Nov30 November 12:21

        I have tried many times unsuccessfully to use as a debit card to pay Barclaycard.
        But I use it to pay via FastPay (use Pay button at bottom of home page). Thanks for the reminder; just paid mine.

  • Peter K says:
    30 Nov30 November 12:32

    From the Monese website for those who want to know, the spend method to get the extra bonus is as follows:
    1) spend on the monese card
    2) international transfers in any other currency than £ or €.

  • Harry T says:
    30 Nov30 November 13:07

    OT, No bits:
    For my Qantas flights from the sale, I need to fly down from Newcastle to London Heathrow to depart from T3. I’m thinking that it might be best to fly the day before to minimise our chances of missing the Qantas flight (assuming the worst and BA somehow aren’t flying or are delayed on that Tuesday etc).

    Can anyone recommend a hotel in T3?

    • Doug M says:
      30 Nov30 November 13:39

      There’s a HGI attached to the car park of T2, easy walk from T3.

    • Top Masseur says:
      30 Nov30 November 14:13

      I’m confused – what’s this question got to do with the Monese article?

      • @mkcol says:
        30 Nov30 November 15:47

        Nothing, which is why the OP (original poster) marked it as OT (off topic) as there isn’t a “Bits” article today.

    • Rob says:
      30 Nov30 November 14:40

      Aerotel now open in T3 but windowless – Hilton T2 walkable if arriving early in the day.

      • Harry T says:
        30 Nov30 November 14:45

        Thanks, Rob – I’ll be staying the night before and my flight is in the evening of the next day – plenty of time for a walk! Will check out Aerotel too.

        • Lyn says:
          30 Nov30 November 16:05

          Just in case you’d also like an IHG option, or the HGI is fully booked, there is also the newish HI Express / Crowne Plaza at T4. It is obviously less convenient than actually staying at T3, but it sounds as if you’ll have plenty of time. Rob has done reviews.

          We stayed there recently in between T5 and T3. We arrived at T5, took the free bus to T4 that evening and then the next morning took the TfL train from T4 to T3 (thanks to advice from HfP commenters). With a fairly late arrival, and another brand needed for an accelerate target, we chose the less expensive HI Express option and were very pleasantly surprised. Good customer service and we were lucky enough to be given a quiet top floor room with very interesting airport views to wake up to in the morning.

          • Harry T says:
            30 Nov30 November 16:11

            Thank you! Will check it out.

            Looks like it’s fairly easy to get between all the terminals anyway, and we have time.

        • Rob says:
          30 Nov30 November 18:20

          In that case I’d look for somewhere with a pool etc where you can have a relaxing morning.

  • Nathan says:
    30 Nov30 November 13:54

    Signed up but still not able to redeem those 2 codes. Shame

    • Nick Newgale says:
      1 Dec1 December 11:54

      Same here! Signed up and been trying to Promo codes ever since with no success! 🙁

      • NickS says:
        1 Dec1 December 21:28

        Same here! I wasted time and effort yesterday am signing up (and had to pay 4.95 to get Monese card posted to me (so it’s not really free?) then to find both offers have “expired” just tried again just now but same situation….

  • Shoestring says:
    30 Nov30 November 14:53

    people are going on Twitter and getting both £50 & £100 giftcards, as recently as 14:45

    • Chas says:
      30 Nov30 November 15:26

      Still not working for me for the £100 (got the £50 yesterday), unless they’ve changed the codes…

      • Shoestring says:
        30 Nov30 November 15:31

        Twitter team

        • Shoestring says:
          30 Nov30 November 15:34

          ie the Monese Twitter team are sorting people out with both codes

          • Lee says:
            30 Nov30 November 16:44

            twitter team are just responding back saying they’ve ran out. is there a way to approach them.

          • Shoestring says:
            30 Nov30 November 16:58

            I don’t do Twitter! so just saw it online – I guess they just OK’d the first few then shut up shop

            a new sign up wouldn’t have any arguments but a longer standing Monese customer could play on that, I suppose

          • Shoestring says:
            30 Nov30 November 17:03

            16:35 [Yeah, just managed to get sorted with my 2nd voucher. As you say, Twitter team finally sorted]

            gotta switch on the old charm, I guess 🙂

  • B says:
    30 Nov30 November 15:30

    OT – no bits.

    I’ve had reward saver flights cancelled 9 months in advance and outbound and inbound legs moved to 1 day earlier (looks like ba are changing their flying days).

    I have a set week I need to be in country.

    Possibilities (in order of preference)

    1. Force rebooking on non ba carrier for same date.
    2. Change dates to slightly longer to cover the week I need
    3. Fly non ba (one world) indirect (extra 2hrs on 4 hr trip)

    Any duty of care for the extra time? Any other options I schools consider? What is ba likely to agree to?

    As always thanks in advance.

    • Shoestring says:
      30 Nov30 November 15:45

      quite tough to force (1) if BA have reasonable alternatives – but I don’t call 1 day earlier ‘reasonable’. So you should in theory be able to force BA to get you alternative flights with a competitor airline

      changing dates with BA should be easy enough if they have availability & BA are indeed pretty helpful in this regard, they’ll let you move cancelled flights pretty much to whichever new dates you choose

      (3) could be easier to get BA to agree to than (1) – usually best to do the homework youself and tell them the new route/s you want

      duty of care should potentially be OK if you stay with BA, ie option (2) – where would you see yourself needing hotel/ food costs that you wouldn’t have incurred if BA had kept to the original timings?

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

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