Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Nectar Connect is closing – an easy source of Avios goes away

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

Nectar has a ‘card linked offers’ programme called Nectar Connect.

This allows you to earn Nectar points (and therefore Avios) when you link your credit and debit card details to your Nectar account and spend at participating retailers.

What I found good about Nectar Connect is that it doubled up with other deals, such as American Express statement credit offers.

Unfortunately, Nectar Connect is closing on 27th October. It has already been removed from the Nectar app.

Nectar Connect to close

It’s not clear why Nectar Connect is closing, but I suspect it is a mix of:

  • poor promotion, including the fact that you couldn’t see what sort of offers were available until after you had registered your credit cards
  • new members did not see any offers for a few days after joining, meaning that momentum was lost
  • an unwillingness by members to give Nectar the access it requested to your financial data (it looked at everything you spent on your credit cards and used this for marketing purposes)
  • the requirement (because of the data mining above) to make members rejoin Nectar Connect every 90 days
  • merchants waking up to the fact that they were paying out twice – for example, I was getting cashback on LNER train tickets via American Express cashback offers AND getting paid out via Nectar Connect for the same purchase

In general, I think that the card linked offers space is due for a shake out.

Nectar Connect to close

With the exception of American Express – which negotiates its own exclusive deals for products which are in line with its brand image and customer base – the other variants of this I see are very ‘me too’.

You’ve got the same offers across different card portfolios, from a relatively fixed number of merchants. It is virtually impossible to keep track of what is available via your different payment cards – I am currently juggling Nectar Connect, Virgin Money, American Express and MBNA cashback deals – and the reward, often just a £1 or so of cashback, isn’t worth the effort.

PR-wise, the other issue is that – American Express aside – the offers you are shown are very random, meaning that there is little value in people like ourselves giving them publicity.

The reason we cover Amex cashback deals is that a) they are usually for meaningful sums, eg £100 back on a hotel booking and b) most readers will find a particular offer on one of their cards. You can’t say this about Nectar Connect, MBNA or Virgin Money.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

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 – 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 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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers 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

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer 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 (67)

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

  • James Harper says:

    I’ve done pretty well out of Nectar since the Avios partnership started and found it easy to collect them in huge numbers. Nectar Connect however and the amount of financial data they wanted and the scraping they could do as a result was not a step too far, it was a huge leap in the dark, something I would never do with financial information, who knows where it might end up?

  • Mike says:

    I used to shop at Tesco but moved to Sainsbury when the ability to collect Avios via nectar started. I also moved all my spend from a Tesco cc to a Sainsbury cc.
    There will literally be no point now using my Sainsbury credit card so I will either revert to my Tesco card or look for another that has benefits.
    However as long as Sainsbury has good nectar offers in store I’ll continue but using a different cc.

  • Joey says:

    Slightly OT but has the conversion from nectar to avios been off for quite some time? Is it just me? I haven’t been able to do the conversion since June and the BAEC customer service is just awful.

  • Andrew says:

    This sums up perfectly my experience and views of Connect, and why I didn’t use it and dropped out.

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.