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The new Hilton Honors payment cards are here! What are the benefits?

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Hilton Honors has launched two new Mastercard payment cards.

And, very interestingly, they are DEBIT cards and not credit cards.

You can see full details of the new Hilton Honors debit cards, and apply, by clicking here.

Even if you have the (closed to new applicants) Hilton Honors Barclaycard or another debit card issued by Currensea, who is behind this card, you can still apply for these new Hilton Honors debit cards and receive the sign-up bonus.

Hilton Honors debit cards

This is a two-part article.  This part is basically ‘the facts’.  The second part, also published today, is a Q&A piece.

Here are the key features of the new Hilton debit cards

  • You can choose between the Hilton Honors Debit Card (£60 annual fee) and the Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card (£150 annual fee)
  • The cards are linked to your existing current account – virtually all UK banks participate – and transactions are charged to it in the same way as if you used your normal bank debit card
  • Both cards come with a sign-up bonus, which is triggered by FX spend
  • Both cards come with instant Hilton Honors status – Silver Elite for the £60 card and Gold Elite for the £150 card
  • Status is NOT a one year offer – you will retain your Hilton Honors status for as long as you retain your debit card
  • These cards are aimed at foreign spending and have far better FX rates than all travel rewards credit cards – 0.5% FX fee on the £60 card and 0% FX fee on the £150 card
  • You earn points on both domestic and foreign currency spend, with a far higher rate for FX spending and Hilton spending
  • Because the cards are debit cards, you will be accepted irrespective of the number of credit cards you hold or your income or employment status – these cards are for everyone. You will need to hold a UK current account with a participating bank and pass a ‘soft’ credit check for ID purposes.

Let’s look at the two cards in detail.

Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card

The premium card – Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card

Unlike most of our card content, I don’t need to quote an APR interest rate because there isn’t one. This is a debit card, with the money taken straight from your existing bank current account.

As you can see from the picture above, it’s a minimalist design – although in reality it is vertical rather than horizontal as we show. All of your personal information is on the back.

This is what you get (full details are on the application website here):

  • £150 annual fee
  • Gold status in Hilton Honors for as long as you hold the card
  • 0% FX fees when spending in foreign currency
  • 1.5 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in the UK
  • 3 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in Hilton properties in the UK
  • 3 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in foreign currency
  • 4.5 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in Hilton properties outside the UK

There is a sign-up bonus of 12,000 Hilton Honors points if you apply by 30th November 2024. You need to spend £2,500 in foreign currency in your first six months to receive the bonus.

You can apply for the Hilton Honors Plus Debit Card here.

Hilton Honors Debit Card

The basic card – Hilton Honors Debit Card

Again, unlike most of our card content, I don’t need to quote an APR interest rate because there isn’t one. This is a debit card, with the money taken straight from your existing bank current account.

This is what you get (full details are on the application website here):

  • £60 annual fee
  • Silver status in Hilton Honors for as long as you hold the card
  • 0.5% FX fees when spending in foreign currency
  • 1 Hilton Honors point per £1 spent in the UK
  • 2 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in Hilton properties in the UK
  • 2 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in foreign currency
  • 3 Hilton Honors points per £1 spent in Hilton properties outside the UK

There is a sign-up bonus of 3,500 Hilton Honors points if you apply by 30th November 2024. You need to spend £1,000 in foreign currency in your first six months to receive the bonus.

You can apply for the Hilton Honors Debit Card here.

Hilton Honors elite status cards

What benefits do I get with the elite status I receive?

Hilton Honors covers 8,000+ hotels globally under 24 main brands – Waldorf Astoria, LXR, Conrad, Hilton, Hilton Grand Vacation, Embassy Suites, DoubleTree, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites, Hampton Inn, Canopy, Curio, Tru, Tapestry Collection and Home2Suites.  New brands include Signia (convention focused), Tempo, Spark (economy), LivSmart (budget extended stay) and Motto (group focused).

There are three levels of elite status in the Hilton Honors programme. Of the two status levels which you can receive from taking out a Hilton Honors debit card:

Gold

  • Status is kept for as long as you hold the debit card
  • Gold usually requires 20 stays or 40 nights or $7,500 of pre-tax spending in a calendar year
  • Key bonus are an 80% bonus on base points on every stay, ‘preferred’ room of some sort (often just a higher floor or better view, not necessarily next category up), free breakfast for two people (or a cash credit towards any food or drink spend in the US)

Silver

  • Status is kept for as long as you hold the debit card
  • Silver usually requires 4 stays or 10 nights in a calendar year
  • Key bonus are a 20% bonus on base points on every stay, free bottled water at most Hilton brands and eligibility for ‘5 nights for the points of 4’ when redeeming

For clarity, you are given the status directly and do NOT receive the equivalent number of elite nights.

This means that if you receive Silver status you will still need to do the full 20 stays or 40 nights or $7,500 of pre-tax spending to become Gold.

Similarly, if you receive Gold status you will still need to do the full 30 stays or 60 nights or $12,000 of pre-tax spending to become Diamond.

In Part 2 ….

What I have written above are the ‘hard facts’ about the new Hilton Honors debit cards.  In Part 2 – click here – we’ll look at the pros and cons and try to anticipate some of your questions.

You can learn more about both cards, and apply, via this special Hilton Honors / Currensea website here.

Category

Hilton Honors, Hilton Honors Mastercard

Comments (153)

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

  • Damien says:
    26 Sep26 September 08:17

    Don’t see SLH listed. I take it that means I won’t get 4.5 x hilton points for a stay abroad in one of these?

  • Soloflyer1977 says:
    26 Sep26 September 08:42

    Now if it was a credit card (with a fee of say £300) with diamond status, then you would have a deal! Not sure if it’s a compelling offer for most people unless you frequent Hilton hotels and therefore benefit from the free breakfast.

  • D.C says:
    26 Sep26 September 08:59

    Very poor offering. Who in their right mind would take this up?

    • JDB says:
      26 Sep26 September 11:13

      @D.C. – well it would appear this card really doesn’t suit you! It will however, suit many people. It’s fantastic to see a financial industry minnow partner with a leading hotel brand to produce a clever and novel product. That can only be a good thing and keep other players on their toes, hopefully encouraging them to sharpen their existing product offerings or launch new ones.

    • Ken says:
      26 Sep26 September 11:31

      Someone who has 4 or 5 night stay and wants Gold perhaps. I do think it has limited appeal other than that.

      I think they have missed a trick by launching the £50 cash back on Amex at the same time.
      Assuming these offers are fully funded by Hilton then why not offer it to first 20k new sign ups ?

      • Rob says:
        26 Sep26 September 11:38

        They aren’t. They are jointly funded by Amex and Hilton, with Amex effectively rebating some of its fee income (probably a ‘reward’ for Hilton forcing all of its hotels to accept Amex).

  • Kowalski says:
    26 Sep26 September 09:21

    Interesting new concept for a rewards card but it seems to miss the mark, for me anyway. I have Hilton Diamond status, so there’s no benefit for me in receiving Gold status with this card, and I still hold the old Hilton Barclaycard. I also already have cards that offer a 0% FX fee.

    The only possible use I see for this card for someone like myself, is if I have some high ticket stays planned in Hilton properties overseas, to get that 4.5 points per £

  • TomB says:
    26 Sep26 September 09:22

    Doesn’t make sense for Plat holder. Curve also now offering 1% cash back on FX spend outside UK & Europe.

  • HampshireHog says:
    26 Sep26 September 09:27

    Nothing to see here, movin on

  • Fraser says:
    26 Sep26 September 09:29

    Earnings seem on a par with other cards, assuming 0.33p per point = 1p per £1 in UK and 1.5p per £1 abroad. Is that on the total paid, or the ex-VAT price?

    So the question comes down to the fee, if you spend 5 nights as a couple or 10 nights solo in Hiltons for personal stays, it could work out well (assuming that your employer pays for breakfast on work stays).

    One area where people may come a cropper is using the debit card to pay for the stays, and then having a sizeable balance placed on reserve by the hotel (one reason I would always pay for the hotel on a credit card, not to mention S75, Amex Plat insurance etc).

    if you have an upcoming trip but no Gold, it might be worthwhile especially in locations where Gold is likely to get you bumped up to an Executive room.

    • John says:
      26 Sep26 September 13:07

      It should be on the amount charged to the card, they won’t know how much is taxes

    • Volker says:
      26 Sep26 September 19:44

      @Fraser At check-in, you could present your credit card and later pay by debit card when checking out. The hotel would pre-authorise your credit card with no impact on your available current account balance at that point.

    • Lady London says:
      27 Sep27 September 15:10

      Unless you’re booking a pre–pay rate you can always use credit card to guarantee the hotel on booking and checkin, then to beat Hilton’s habit of charging your card overnight on your last night, pay at Reception on your last evening using the debit card. This avoids the credit hold being kept on your current sccount before you pay.

  • Sotirios Aligiannis says:
    26 Sep26 September 10:50

    As always in this game, every person is a separate case and every card may or may not be a fit for every person. Comments like “this is rubbish” translate as “this is rubbish TO ME”.

    From my point of view, the £150 annual fee covers the equivalent of £5016 spending in foreign currency. If one does spend at least that amount every year, then it makes sense. The outcome will be at least 15000 HH points, maybe more if there are Hilton stays abroad. It can add up quickly if one is staying in Hilton properties, considering the additional promos that HH runs all the time.

    Let’s compare it to Curve, which comes at £120 annually for the plan that gives £1000 monthly spend at 0% FX, to be comparable with the Hilton debit card. For the same £5000 annual spending, the return in miles/points would depend on which card is being used in Curve. I personally use a Barclaycard to earn avios, others may use something else. In the end of the day, there’s a small saving in the annual cost and that’s all about it.

    So, ask yourself if you’re staying in Hilton properties, and how often, and if you do spend at least £5K abroad, then it may be worth to gather some HH points.

    • Roy says:
      27 Sep27 September 15:03

      I’m not sure I understand your arithmetic. You’d have to spend £15,000 abroad (assuming non-Hilton spend) to break even – assuming you don’t value the gold status (perhaps because you already have Gold or higher).

      £15,000 spend will get you 45,000 Hilton Honors points, which at the HfP valuation of 0.33p per point means you’ve earned £150 worth of points.

      The free card is much worse, though. You have to spend £36,000 to break even – hence earning 72,000 points worth £240 – which will offset the £60 annual fee and the £180 you paid in foreign exchange fees on that £36,000 spend!

      • Roy says:
        27 Sep27 September 15:07

        For the free card, you’d be better off concentrating on UK spend – then you’d break even with only £18,000 spend.

        This is all ridiculous, though, unless you value the status.

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

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