Maximising chances of approval for Avios Plus card – advice needed

[leticiab]

Hi all,

I am a full time employee on a salary of about £42k. I’ve had a Lloyd’s Mastercard credit card, for 9 years that I’ve always paid in full, limit £5k; and a British Airways Avios credit card since July 2023 (initially BAPP then downgraded to blue card), limit £12k. Both always paid in full.
I don’t own a home but rent/bills are only about 1/3 of my monthly income and have no other debt.
I should mention that I opened a few new current accounts in August to get switching bonuses so this will still be on my credit report.

I want to apply for a Barclaycard Avios Plus in March/April once I’ve got my BA Companion voucher on the other card. (The plan would be to only hold the Plus card to get the initial bonus and then downgrade eventually). I only want this for the initial points bonus and then to be able to rack up Avios in instances where Amex isn’t accepted.

However, as I already have 2 credit cards with total limit £17k, I’m worried that Barclays may not accept me given my modest income.

Does anyone here have any advice relating to my situation? I don’t need my full credit limit right now, so I was thinking of asking Amex and to reduce my allowance – could this help my chances?

Thanks!

[NorthernLass]

There doesn’t seem much rhyme or reason to Barclays acceptance criteria, but it’s easy enough to reduce your credit limit on your Amex if you’re worried about that.

[Misty]

I’m with northern lass on this, if you don’t need your current credit limit you might as well reduce it. It’s hard to know with Barclaycard what their criteria is, the only way to know if you will be accepted is to apply.

[drdan]

Deffo reduce credit limits on Amex+/- Lloyds.

[N16K]

For quite a few years Barclaycard would not accept me for the Avios free or paid cards despite high enough income, 999 credit rating etc. I have a Nationwide credit, Amex Plat and Amex BAPP cards. I was checking MSE credit card eligibility checker and BarclayCard avios was always 0% chance of approval, so I gave up. My wife got accepted no problem, but I just couldn’t.
I have also done lots of current account switches lately, one of which was to Barclays premier with Avios sub added (got 25k Avios for that). Since then it seems something changed and BarclayCard avios came up on my card eligibility checker. I applied and now have it. Nothing else really changed, I have same salary, same credit score, loads of credit cards, and high mortgage. Maybe having my pay go into my Barclays account has made the difference? I am not better or worse a customer for them than I was before. Maybe they trust me more now they see my salary payments? Or different criteria for Premier customers?
I intend to hit the £10k upgrade voucher very quickly, then downgrade to the free card. Through Curve and the household’s 2 current accounts I should be able to get 4 upgrade vouchers between now and March. Not sure I’ll be able to use them all.

[leticiab]

For anyone who may care, a couple of weeks ago I did apply for the Barclaycard Avios Plus, without bothering to reduce my credit limits on my other 2 CCs, and was accepted immediately with £13k credit limit. This is about 5 months on from my various current account openings/switchings.

It’s likely in my favour that I don’t have a mortgage or any other debt to my name and that my rent is low.

[mveill1]

I got rejected a bunch of times, with stellar credit and a high wage. Only thing I changed to get accepted just today was to pretend I intended to do a balance transfer on my application. They’ll wait a long time for it because I’ve no balance to transfer – I pay my bills.

Before launching a product they usually make sure that it’s “positive NPV”, ie it will make money for the bank after all fees and promotions. I happen to have heard that this one was always a stinker – perhaps the application scorecard only accepts mid scoring applicants (their own scorecard not Experian and the like). A profitable customer is one that you can keep your foot on the neck for a long time and charge interest, but who won’t actually default for at least a few years.