NEW: Earn Virgin Points at your favourite restaurants with SquareMeal

Virgin Red has teamed up with SquareMeal, the restaurant booking service, to allow you to earn Virgin Points when you eat out.

There are three ways to earn.

You can, as you would expect, earn 100 points when you book a restaurant via the SquareMeal website. You can get an extra 25 points by leaving a review afterwards.

More interestingly, you can earn up to 3,000 points when you pay with a registered credit card at selected restaurants – even if you didn’t book via SquareMeal.

How does the offer work?

If you don’t already have a SquareMeal account, you can register via this page of the SquareMeal website.

The link above is my refer a friend link, which will earn you an additional 500 points after your first meal booking.

During registration, you will be asked if you want to earn SquareMeal points, worth 1p each towards future meal bookings, or Virgin Points.

• If you say ‘SquareMeal points’, you will earn 200 SquareMeal points when you register

• If you say ‘Virgin Points’, you don’t get any bonus

However, if you say ‘SquareMeal points’ and then switch to Virgin Points when your account is active, your 200 SquareMeal points do NOT get turned into Virgin Points. Will you ever use them for anything? No idea!

Already got a SquareMeal account?

Log in and head to your profile. You’ll see that you can now switch from earning SquareMeal points to Virgin Points.

As far as I can tell, your existing points balance will NOT be converted. Only future points earned will be sent to Virgin.

You need a Virgin Red account

In order to earn Virgin Points from SquareMeal, you need a Virgin Red account. It isn’t enough to have a Virgin Flying Club account.

If you are not already registered with Virgin Red, download their app, create an account and link it to your Virgin Flying Club account. You should do this anyway, as Virgin Red has lots of additional ways to earn and spend Virgin Points.

SquareMeal will ask for the email address linked to your Virgin Red account as part of the registration process.

How do I earn Virgin Points with SquareMeal?

There are three routes.

Each time you make a restaurant booking via the website (there is no app), you earn 100 Virgin Points.

Each time you review a restaurant you have booked via the site, you earn 25 Virgin Points.

Each time you dine at a restaurant with an exclusive card-linked offer running, you receive up to 3,000 Virgin Points – even if you didn’t book by SquareMeal.

Here is an example of the card-linked offers available near the HfP office:

As you can see, if we nip up to the top floor of our building we will earn 2,000 Virgin Points if we dine at Coq d’Argent.

Alternatively, if we nip around the corner to Brasserie Blanc, we will earn 10 Virgin Points for every £1 we spend as a returning diner (2nd visit within 60 days). New diners receive 300 Virgin Points.

You must register your credit card on the SquareMeal website to trigger these bonuses. Remember that you don’t need to have booked via SquareMeal.

Conclusion

SquareMeal doesn’t have the range of OpenTable – it is primarily used for booking business lunches – but it offers an easy way of picking up some extra Virgin Points.

This is especially true of the card linked offers, where you can pick up Virgin Points simply by linking your payment cards to your SquareMeal profile. You never need to visit the site again if you choose, and you may pick up the odd chunk of points when dining out.

You can register via my referral link here which will get you an additional 500 points after your first completed booking.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (March 2023)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 15,000 Virgin Points):

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 30,000 Virgin Points.

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

Until 30th March 2023, the sign up bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to 120,000 Membership Rewards points – click here. The bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to 60,000 Membership Rewards points – click here. T&C apply, see the application forms for details.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points. 

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)