Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

What is the best credit card for foreign FX spending when someone else is paying?

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We write a lot on Head for Points about ways to minimise the 3% foreign exchange fee added to most credit and debit card transactions outside the UK.

For personal travel you might want to get a separate free credit card to use abroad.  There are no travel rewards card without a foreign exchange fee, although the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are fee-free in the Eurozone.

best credit card for foreign FX spending

Another option is to get a free card from Currensea. Currensea is a simple but clever idea. You pay abroad with your Currensea Mastercard debit card. Currensea translates the cost to Sterling with just a 0.5% fee (83% less than most cards charge) and withdraws the money from your bank account.  Currensea also works off the spot rate, giving you an extra saving from the wholesale rate used by your card company.  You can find out more by clicking here. Currensea is free so there is no risk in giving it a try.

You can also look at debit cards from the like of Revolut. Curve Card is also an option although it has got increasingly confusing to use, with different FX rules applying based on your type of card, the day of the week and the currency you are spending in.

If you have a Limited Company, you DO have a credit card which has 0% FX fees and earns 1 Avios per £1the Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa. Our review is here.

You may choose to act differently when travelling for work

When you are travelling for work, however, your credit card bills will be reimbursed by your employer.  There is no incentive for you to get a separate 0% foreign exchange fee card.

I won’t focus on credit card spend bonuses here because those don’t change whether you are spending in the UK or abroad.  I just want to look at cards which increase your earning rate for FX transactions.

best credit card for foreign FX spending

Here are your two options for reward cards which have extra bonuses for foreign spending but in return add on an FX fee of around 3%.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold offers double points when you spend abroad, which means 2 Membership Rewards points per £1.

This translates into two Avios or other airline miles, four Hilton Honors points, three Marriott Bonvoy points or six Radisson Rewards points amongst other things.  The card is free for the first year.

Interesting, The Platinum Card from American Express – which has a £575 annual fee – does not offer this benefit.

FX spend may also help you trigger another Amex Gold benefit. You receive 2,500 bonus Membership Rewards points for every cumulative £5,000 you spend, up to a maximum of 12,500 bonus points per year. This means that a £5,000 spend in a foreign currency would earn 12,500 Membership Rewards points – 5,000 base points, 5,000 FX spend bonus points and a 2,500 points bonus for hitting another £5,000 mileston.

Our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review is here. You can apply here.

best credit card for foreign FX spending

HSBC Premier and Premier World Elite Mastercards

The two HSBC Premier cards offers double points abroad.

On the free card, this means you are earning 1 Avios or other airline mile instead of the standard 0.5 miles per £1.

On the World Elite card, which has a £195 annual fee, you would be earning 2 Avios or other airline miles instead of the standard 1 mile per £1.

You must have a HSBC Premier current account to apply for either of these cards which has strict eligibility criteria. HSBC Premier is free, however, so if you do meet the income criteria then it isn’t a bad option for your day to day banking and is (just) a step ahead of your average current account.

Our HSBC Premier credit card review is here and our HSBC Premier World Elite card review is here. You can apply here.

Conclusion

As you can see there are a couple of good options here that can get you a return of around 2% on your non-Sterling spending. This assumes that you value an Avios or airline mile at 1p.

That is less than the 3% foreign fee you are incurring, of course, which is why these are not attractive deals for personal use, just for business expenditure.


best travel rewards credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – October 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher 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

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

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

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

Get 1% cashback when you spend at least £2,000 per month* Read our full review

Comments (51)

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

  • Jill Kinkell says:

    Curve linked to Barclays for me and OH has Halifax’s Clarity.

  • David says:

    NatWest Black Rewards is Fx free for purchases and gives 0.5% cash back as rewards points which can be converted to cash or to various rewards including Avios. Card also gives 1% cash back on all supermarket spend. It’s not free though unless you have a NatWest Premier account.

  • Rob says:

    Curve fees can hit 3.5% though – if you are a) over your £500 monthly FX cap, b) not paying in a ‘core’ currency and c) paying at weekends.

    • Phil says:

      I’ve found it easy to stay within my FX cap. If you are planning to go above it takes about thirty seconds in the app to switch to a tier that gives a higher limit and then downgrade again later. I don’t have an issue that it’s a lower fx rate during the week. I’d rather that, then the weekend rate be used as the rate for the entire week. Even the weekend rate is generally cheaper than other “non-fx” cards when I’ve looked at comparisons in the past. And let’s face it, 90% of the time most people will be using the main currencies such of Euro, Dollar etc. If I do happen to be going slightly off the beaten track, it’s easy enough to check in advance. It’s horses for courses, it ticks all of the main boxes for me (not topping up, 1.5 avios per £1 spent etc). If you travel every weekend to random countries with unusual currencies then maybe not so, but how many people fall into that category?

      • Phil says:

        Also meant to say that the free card gives up to £1,000 of fx free per month. If you have a player 2, that’s £2,000 in total.

      • JDB says:

        Yes, I don’t really understand why people are so hung up about the last couple of per cent when, if for example you book a hotel at the FHR or Virtuoso rate, even fully valuing the benefits, it’s like buying an aircraft at list price which is why the hotel still has the capacity to pay 15-20% commission to the booking agent. I would rather pay the right price for the hotel that will save multiple times the FX fee and not worry too much if I or a family member takes out the ‘wrong’ card to pay.

        • Rob says:

          Tend to agree. I’m certainly not in favour about taking out a credit card just to use outside the UK, especially as it reduces your ability to pick up extra rewards cards and its another monthly bill / another direct debit to watch. I certainly wouldn’t bother if my FX spend was only £5k or so per year.

          My personal spend is messier though, given we have six figures of FX spend if you include HfP – and for extra confusion the HfP spend is tax deductible so the value of the rewards effectively double.

        • RussellH says:

          I totally disagree.
          2.99% of £5000 is £149.50. That equals one of my (larger) monthly pension income payments and would pay for most of three lunches out for the two of us.
          Or I could think of it as the best part of a month’s grocery shopping. Either way it is most certainly not trivial.
          As far as I am concerned, every £1 that stays in my pocket and does not get taken by a bank is a win.
          And currently I do not see the relevance of Rob’s comment “it reduces your ability to pick up extra rewards cards”: these days there are none to pick up as far as I can see. The IHG card has gone and my Marriott and Hilton cards are both long closed to new holders. There is little point in my applying for new Amex cards as I already have both a Rewards and an Avios Amex. I have a Virgin credit card, but with just 4 points in the a/c using it is not going get me anything useful. There is nothing else available as far as I can see.

      • CamFlyer says:

        I find my Curve (+ Barclays; Virgin stopped working altogether about a year ago) is often rejected, at least for any sizeable transaction. On a recent trip, no spend in TRY, AED or BDT >~£50 equivalent went through, which makes Curve nearly useless. I’ve been using Amex Gold, plus VS MC and an Amex IEC for EUR.

        • Mikeact says:

          ‘Nearly useless’….for you. Surprised you still carry/use it.

        • Mr. AC says:

          This is very weird. I’ve had no rejections outside of outages, including paying £3000+ in person and £5000+ online.

      • Mikeact says:

        Agree…but it’s never been wholeheartedly welcomed on here.

  • VickyTM says:

    If I buy flights in a foreign currency on the Amex gold, do I get 4 points per GBP?

    • dougzz99 says:

      3MR, each is an additional 1MR not double.

    • JDB says:

      Yes, it’s 3MR total now, plus potentially 0.5MR bonus so it’s basically a wash for the FX fee and gives you s75 which is pretty valuable for quite a few airlines. It’s also almost always much cheaper than having the airline bill you in £ and for many countries the fares are much cheaper on their domestic sites and not restricted to local residents.

  • Singh says:

    Great read! Is this also the case for the AMEX business gold?

  • Anouj says:

    Algbra gives 1.5% on all contactless transactions, even abroad.

  • Jenny says:

    Many companies (including all I have worked for) require overseas expenses to be input into their expense claim system in the original currency incurred, and the software does the translation, which in my experience has been the spot rate. So even though the company will be reimbursing them, there is every incentive for me as an employee to use a credit card without an fx fee or poor fx rate. I use a Nationwide credit card for this purpose, which almost always translates at the spot rate (with only one exception over many years and a lot of overseas travel), and is at worst only a few pence different to tge fx rate used by company software. No rewards on this card, but it does mean I’m not out of pocket when travelling on company business.

    • Rob says:

      I can’t believe your staff are voluntarily paying 3% on what could easily be £5,000 for a week long trip in a decent hotel with a couple of pricey client dinners.

    • Scottpat78 says:

      Unfortunately I have a corporate card which I use for expenses. Using my personal cards would be a points gold mine. On the couple of occasions my corporate card has been declined (no real reason), I used my personal card and in the expenses system I was able to manually adjust the Fx rate to one that included the transaction fee. Is that possible with yours?

    • memesweeper says:

      Unless you paid in cash, they are reimbursing the wrong amount. You change the currency to GBP and put the price you paid into the system.

      Companies with inflexible procedures usually have something called a “grievance procedure”. I’d be lodging mine PDQ if anyone expected me to cover currency risk of moving rates to their “spot” at a later date, never mind 3% card fees and the like.

      Also, using your debit card isn’t great when there’s a wait for company reimbursement.

  • Rob says:

    If you’d got the Barclaycard you would have disqualified yourself from the 50,000 Avios bonus ok the Avios Plus card!

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

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