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

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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 (November 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

50,000 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

20,000 points (ONLY TO 9TH DECEMBER) 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 (67)

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

  • Andrew. says:

    Rob you say you are juggling MBNA, Nectar, Virgin & Amex deals…

    Don’t you also have a Barclaycard? They have their own site for spend related rebates (although it might just be Visa).

    • AJA says:

      I have the Barclaycard offers but they are also random. I have an offer of 5% back at Warner Leisure Hotels. I do at least get an email listing some of the offers available.

      I never signed up for Nectar Connect as I was unwilling to let them have more access to my data than they already had via the Nectar app.

    • Alex G says:

      Barclaycard rebates are only on Visa cards. No offers on the Barclaycard Avios Mastercard.

  • John says:

    I signed up with several accounts but never got any offers I wanted (except LNER but I didn’t need any train tickets at the times it was offered) and then I couldn’t get it to work.

  • Rob says:

    ‘Cos we’re not MSE.

    • PeteM says:

      Airtime Rewards do come up regularly in the forums. I’ve got to say it’s probably my favourite scheme in terms of functionality – the rewards aren’t generally ground-breaking, but they always track for me, they track correctly and pay out in the timescales they advise. The few times I’ve had to return part of an order they actually updated the transaction and didn’t just decline the whole thing as other schemes do. And it generally stacks with any other offers and promotions!

  • hb13 says:

    Now that we are out of the EU and not tied to their card interchange rates, do we expect that we’ll soon, maybe see some credit cards on the market with bigger bonuses like the US or Australia?
    That would be awesome.

    • Rob says:

      What insane Govt minister is going to allow two US oligopolistic card companies to pocket an extra 1% from all UK shop purchases?

      • Layerden says:

        A minister who might be on their pay roll!

        • Richie says:

          …and receiving donations to their party.

          • Ironside says:

            …and who wanted the UK out of the EU primarily so it could be assimilated into the USA…

      • RussellH says:

        There have always been plenty of ministers capable of insane decisions.
        And I suspect that most voters would not understand the implications of a change were one to be made.
        But nevertheless, the point stands!

      • hb13 says:

        I don’t understand what this has to do with government allowing US companies to pocket extra commission UK shop purchases? Based on the CURRENT UK interchange rate, we have seen Barclays, Amex and Virgin Money offer some decent (in recent months very large) bonuses – so what’s not to say other banks here in the UK don’t do the same or the current/recent offers don’t increase?

        • Rob says:

          These are loss leaders. You see the ‘real’ margin when you look at retailer cards – Amazon 0.2%, M&S 0.2%, Sainsburys 0.1% etc in return. Interchange is 0.3% remember.

          Barclays is losing millions (tens of millions actually – the bill for tube ads alone during the last campaign was multi-single digit millions) on their card in order to pull in a wealthier 30ish demographic who they hope to crossell other stuff. When I was kid I was marched down to the local Barclays in 1979 to open a current account, which I kept until I joined HSBC in 1994 and had to open a staff account to get paid. I doubt any child in Britain has opened a Barclays account this century. I suspect the average current account holder at Barclays is over 50. The Avios cards probably lose about the same money as a big TV ad campaign and are more effective.

          The Virgin cards are, legally, different to all other co-brand credit card deals, an arrangement only possible because of Virgin Group ties. Virgin sells the miles at a massive discount in return for a cut of interest and (non EU) FX revenue.

          Amex isn’t impacted by interchange caps in the same way and retains a bit more flexibility although it does face some restrictions.

          All other points issuers (airlines, hotels) simply want to sell points to a card company, full stop. The cost of the points would be 2-3x the interchange revenue. They are not willing (or legally able) to effectively form a mini-bank to issue the card and share all revenue. They certainly have no interest in deliberately losing millions of pounds every year just to have a few people wave their credit card around.

    • JDB says:

      The UK was at the forefront of reducing interchange fees. It also doesn’t play too well politically to increase charges for everyone to subsidise the very small number of people who use rewards credit cards.

    • Sam says:

      Interchange fees are on the way down all over the place, not up.

      I also wouldn’t count on the UK being out of the orbit of the EEA long enough to drop most of the EEA interchange rules.

  • Jan M says:

    Also worth flagging that the number of cards you could add to Nectar Connect was surprisingly limited. I couldn’t add Virgin, Chase or (less surprising) Curve.

  • Johnny5a says:

    I had no issue with the 90 days, this is a rule imposed by the Open banking API not nectar.

    I’ve collected around 11,000 nectar points via NC. I did have trouble getting the 6000 points via IHG booking but a live chat sorted it out.

  • RussellH says:

    I still have LNER on an Amex and Nectar Connect. But my upcoming rail journeys are on InterRail.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    MBNA is offering me 5% off LNER and Airtime the same.

    I usually buy a couple of hundred quids worth of vouchers.

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