Which of the two Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards is best for you?

In February 2022, Barclays launched two Avios-earning Barclaycard Avios Mastercard credit cards.

These are very, very good products with everything you could ask for, and are easily (in my view) the most attractive Visa or Mastercard credit cards in the UK. You get:

• a great sign-up bonus which the majority of HfP readers will qualify for
• a very high Avios earning rate
• an annual BA cabin upgrade voucher for hitting spending targets

Every HfP reader in the UK should seriously consider applying for one of these cards.

But which one should you get ….?

You can apply for the Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card here and the free Barclaycard Avios credit card here.

Which Barclaycard Avios credit card should you get?

In this article, I want to give you some suggestions as to which of the two cards you should get. (You can’t have both, before you ask!)

Before I do that, let’s summarise the two Barclaycard Avios credit cards:

The free card: Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

The representative APR is 29.9% variable.

The benefits are:

• no annual fee
• a sign-up bonus for new Barclaycard customers of 5,000 Avios if you spend £1,000 in three months
• you earn 1 Avios per £1 spent
• you earn a British Airways cabin upgrade voucher if you spend £20,000 in a card year
• alternatively, you can take 7,000 Avios instead of the upgrade voucher

You can apply here.

The paid card: Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

The representative APR is 80.1% APR variable, including the annual fee.  The representative APR on purchases is 29.9% variable.

The benefits are:

• a £20 per month fee (reduced to £15 for customers who hold Barclays Avios Rewards via their current account)
• a sign-up bonus for new Barclaycard customers of 25,000 Avios if you spend £3,000 in three months
• you earn 1.5 Avios per £1 spent
• you earn a British Airways cabin upgrade voucher if you spend £10,000 in a card year
• alternatively, you can take 7,000 Avios instead of the upgrade voucher
• you receive a DragonPass airport lounge pass which allows you to book lounges for just £20.50

You can apply here.

Which Barclaycard Avios credit card is best for you?

If you’re a UK-based HfP reader then you should probably get one of these cards. But which?

It’s important to separate your thinking between long-term and short-term.

In the short term, I strongly recommend you get the £20 per month card. This has three advantages

• a far higher welcome bonus of 25,000 Avios
• a higher earn rate of 1.5 Avios per £1 spent
• the triggering of the cabin upgrade voucher with just £10,000 of spend

If, after a few months, you decide that it isn’t for you, you can swap to the free card.

On the other hand, if you start with the free card, you will NOT be able to get the 25,000 Avios if you upgrade to the paid Barclaycard Avios Plus card. I think it’s better to start with the paid card, bank the 25,000 Avios sign-up bonus if you can spend £3,000 in three months, and then rethink later on.

Long term, which card is best?

If you’re looking for a simple answer, there isn’t one. Sorry!

Before I go on, remember that you CAN apply for the Barclaycard Avios credit cards, and get the sign-up bonus, if you have a British Airways American Express card.

Here are some scenarios:

You keep your BA Amex as your main card, because you value the 2-4-1 Companion Voucher, and add a Barclaycard Avios Mastercard for places where Amex is not accepted

I think this is the most common scenario amongst HfP readers.

I would start with the paid Barclaycard because of the 25,000 Avios bonus. If you find that you don’t have £10,000 per year of non-Amex expenditure to trigger the cabin upgrade voucher, you can always downgrade to the free Barclaycard later.

You cancel your BA Amex card and move all of your credit card spending to a Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

If you have the free British Airways American Express Credit Card and do not trigger the 2-4-1 Companion Voucher (or you do, but never use it because it is only valid in Economy) then I don’t see any value in keeping it. Remember that you need £15,000 to trigger the 2-4-1 voucher on the BA Amex. You might as well move all of your credit card spending to a Barclaycard Avios Mastercard.

Logically, if you have the free British Airways American Express Credit Card you should probably consider cancelling in favour of the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard. However, I would think about the Barclaycard Avios Plus card because:

• even if you won’t manage to spend £15,000 on the free BA Amex to trigger the Companion Voucher, you may be able to manage £10,000 of spending on the Avios Plus Mastercard with wider acceptance

• if you ignored the 2-4-1 Companion Voucher on the free BA Amex because it can only be used for Economy redemptions, you may find more value in a cabin upgrade voucher which can get you into World Traveller Plus and Club World (but not First Class)

• in the short term, it makes sense to try the Barclaycard Avios Plus card due to the 25,000 Avios sign-up bonus (£3,000 spend in three months required)

You stick with your BA Amex card and decide not to get a Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

I don’t see a lot of sense in this approach, to be honest. Everyone needs an alternative to American Express in their purse or wallet, and I doubt you have a more generous Visa or Mastercard than the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard which earns 1 Avios per £1.

Even if you have no chance of spending £20,000 to trigger the cabin upgrade voucher on the free Barclaycard Avios card, you should be able to earn a decent amount of Avios from merchants who do not accept American Express.

Simple things like paying your council tax bill on a Mastercard – allowed by most local authorities – would earn you a four-figure pile of Avios.

Other factors to consider

Part of the decision about which card to get, and whether it should replace your existing British Airways American Express card, is the total amount of annual credit card spending you have.

How can you allocate it to trigger the optimum number of BA Amex 2-4-1 Companion Vouchers and Barclays Avios cabin upgrade vouchers?

What works best for you will depend on your total card spend, your mix of Amex and non-Amex card spend, the number of Avios you earn each year and the size of your family.

A family of three, for example, is a big winner. You could earn a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 Companion Voucher and a Barclaycard Avios cabin upgrade voucher and use both on the same trip to get all three of you into a premium cabin.

(You would need to make two separate bookings to do this – use the 2-4-1 Companion Voucher for one adult and a child, and the cabin upgrade voucher for the second adult.)

How do the Barclaycard Avios credit cards compare with other Visa or Mastercard products?

Whatever Mastercard or Visa card you currently have, the Barclaycard Avios Mastercards are likely to be better.

Got a cashback card?

MBNA Horizon, Amazon, John Lewis Partnership, Marks & Spencer etc? You are getting 0.5% at best and probably 0.1% to 0.25%.

Got a Virgin Atlantic Mastercard?

This is less clear cut, and is obviously heavily influenced by your love of Virgin Atlantic and whether you already earn their points from other sources.

Looking purely at the credit cards, the free Barclaycard Avios card is more generous per £1 than the free Virgin Atlantic Reward card (1 Avios vs 0.75 Virgin Points). The sign-up bonus is also better (5,000 Avios vs 3,000 Virgin Points.) The annual vouchers are harder to compare as they offer different benefits.

For heavier spenders, the £160 Virgin Atlantic Reward+ is on a par with the £240 Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard for the first year. The fee difference is offset by the sign-up bonuses (18,000 Virgin Points vs 25,000 Avios). The earning rate is identical at 1.5 per £1. The annual vouchers are harder to compare as they offer different benefits. After Year 1, the maths get a bit trickier and its a less clear cut decision.

Of course, even if you decide to keep your Virgin Atlantic Mastercard, you should still seriously consider getting one of the Barclaycard Avios cards purely for the sign up bonus.

Got the legacy Hilton Honors credit card?

Tricky. Because this card is issued by Barclaycard, it disqualifies you from applying for the Barclaycard Avios credit cards.

1 Avios per £1 from the free Barclaycard Avios card (worth 1p+) clearly beats 2 Hilton points per £1 (worth 0.66p in total) from the Hilton Honors card. However, if you did want to switch you would need to cancel your Hilton Honors card and wait six months before you would receive a sign-up bonus on one of the Barclaycard Avios cards.

Existing holders of a standard Barclaycard may receive a targetted offer in the Barclaycard app to switch to Barclaycard Avios, with a small Avios bonus on offer. No switch offer is ever made to holders of the Hilton Barclaycard due to the terms of the partnership.

Got a HSBC Premier Mastercard?

The Barclaycard Avios cards trump the two HSBC Premier Mastercards even if you ignore the value of the Barclaycard Avios cabin upgrade voucher:

• the free Barclaycard earns 1 Avios per £1 vs 0.5 Avios with the free HSBC card
• the paid Barclaycard Avios Plus card earns the same as the paid HSBC card (1.5 Avios per £1) but the annual fee is £50 lower

The HSBC Premier cards only have value if you use them primarily to earn miles with a non-Avios airline. Even then, you may decide that earning Avios at a higher rate – plus earning the cabin upgrade voucher – makes it worth switching.

(The HSBC Premier credit cards do have occasional 20%-30% transfer bonuses into Avios. Whilst these may not continue it is worth factoring into your thinking.)

If you have the HSBC Premier credit cards then, by default, you have a HSBC Premier bank account. Now that you no longer need the HSBC credit card, you could move to Barclays Premier and Barclays Avios Rewards (details here) earning a second annual cabin upgrade voucher.

Conclusion

The launch of the two Barclaycard Avios credit cards led many to reshape their miles and points strategies. You no longer needed a secondary programme (probably Virgin Points) purely because you needed somewhere to put points from your non-Amex card spending.

If you are a HfP reader, it is highly likely that one of these two Barclaycard Avios Mastercards should go in your purse or wallet.

Long term, you need to decide – based on your annual card spend, the size of your family, the number of Avios you earn each year and your willingness to pay card fees – whether you go ‘all in’ with Barclaycard Avios or only use it to fill the gaps when you can’t use an Amex.

In the short term, I think you should look seriously at the Barclaycard Avios Plus card because of the 25,000 Avios bonus.

Remember that you need to spend £3,000 in three months. With the fee paid monthly, it is easy to trade down to the free card later if you find you are not getting full value from it.

How to apply

The application form for the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard (5,000 Avios bonus) is here.

The application form for the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard (25,000 Avios bonus) is here.

Disclaimer: Head for Points is a journalistic website. Nothing here should be construed as financial advice, and it is your own responsibility to ensure that any product is right for your circumstances. Recommendations are based primarily on the ability to earn miles and points. The site discusses products offered by lenders but is not a lender itself. Robert Burgess, trading as Head for Points, is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as an independent credit broker.