Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Take part in paid research about the British Airways Prepaid Mastercard

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Earlier in the year, IAG Loyalty relaunched the British Airways Prepaid Mastercard.

If you took out this card, IAG Loyalty is keen to hear your thoughts.

IAG Loyalty is currently running research into the user experience of the card and needs cardholders to take part. This research is also open to people who have had the card but recently cancelled it.

British Airways Prepaid Mastercard research

Participants in the research will need to take part in a virtual feedback session for 30 minutes, held via Zoom between Tuesday 25th October –  Tuesday 1st November between the hours of 10.30am – 5.30pm (BST/GMT). In return they will get $30 paid into their Paypal account.

If you hold or have held the card recently and are interested in giving your feedback, this is a good opportunity to do so. Please note there are very limited places and it will be on a first come, first served basis. We will update this article once all the places are taken.

To take part the feedback sessions, please sign up to IAG Loyalty’s user testing platform using this link here. Once signed up, you’ll be able to choose a time slot and if none are available it will mean the places have all been taken. Thank you in advance for your help.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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 – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits 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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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

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

Comments (73)

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

  • Craig says:

    I never received the sign up bonuses for the prepaid card and spent over £600 now! No way to contact anyone about it 🙁

  • Richie says:

    Can you use the BA Mastercard at Sainsburys to buy headache remedies to cure the pain of having this card, if so any nectar points?

    • Will says:

      You can use it to scrape ice off the car windscreen this winter. It would be nice if the app confirmed that you have qualified for the intro spend bonus. Don’t see that anywhere but note that driver awareness courses are considered fines not purchases and so are not qualifying spend despite initially being credited avios.

  • Wotsit says:

    FOR:- Rob/Sinead. The comments thread isn’t easy to read because there are two threads intertwined for each of the two articles at the start. Just a suggestion….where there are multiple lead articles, is it worth posting them in separate messages so that the comments only relate to the one thread?

    • Rob says:

      We do this for email purposes, primarily. It also avoids clogging the home page with less important news. Normally ‘Bits’ pieces don’t get many comments!

  • Mayfair Mike says:

    I thought this was an affluent readership? Never seen as many people fall over themselves for $30 and waste nearly an hour of their time!

    • JerrySignfield says:

      Some people do these things for fun!

    • Richie says:

      I made a decusion not to bother with the BA Mastercard because it was obvious it was going to be a pain, I’m so glad I did.

      • vol says:

        +1

        Not worth the stress.

        It seems like people will end up paying £2.99 per month for ten months before they see their bonuses 😩🤦‍♀️

  • JerrySignfield says:

    My experience is I applied when the offer was on, they said wait while checking, I waited, I used online chat, I phoned support, I emailed kyi, I emailed the prepaid company and the application is still pending now. Literally nobody seems to care at a all!

    • Yorkieflyer says:

      My application didn’t include the referral for some reason do I tried to amend/withdraw the application. Neither the issuer nor AVIOS would/could touch it. Deleted app and gave up

  • Tom says:

    This card was a huge mistake. loaded it will £2000 for a trip to the USA back in August. Never got any welcome bonus for using it.

    Spent $100 on petrol at a petrol station. Only needed $80, normally you get refunded the difference. Still showing as ‘Pending’ after 2 months so lost effectively lost $20!

    I still have 8 transaction over $100 showing as ‘pending’ after 2 months so no Avios awarded for them.

    Nobody ever answers the phone. If I lost the card I wouldn’t even be able to report it stolen.

    Worse card in the world and I cant even call someone to get rid of it!

    • Londonsteve says:

      If you look at your balance and check the actual transactions you’ve done (including any expected refunds) I suspect you’ll find the total does match, but the way the transactions are listed is a total mess. Things remain pending forever (even if they’ve been processed), foreign currency transaction fees are applied post-date, leading to a sudden drop in the available balance, refund transactions don’t seem to appear at all. Basically it becomes impossible after a while to follow what you’ve bought, with whom and for how much, you end up just having to trust the available balance as ‘correct’, unless you keep detailed information on every transaction separately, e.g. card and purchase receipts.

  • Seb says:

    I opened my account 24/07 and noticed I received my 2x 1500 avíos. So it indeed did take 90 days 🙄. Cancelling now, what a terrible product.

  • RussellH says:

    Why do they not want to know why some of us have no intention of ever taking out one of these cards?

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.