Best reward/cash back credit card

xman

Why is the Barclaycard Rewards card not in the MSE list of recommended CC rewards cards? - I see it that page last updated 8 October 2020? 
I only found out about this card last week when I found this thread!    
Looks like a good alternative, applied a couple of days ago.  The Amex Platinum card is our preferred card, the Barclays Reward will now replace the Amazon Platinum and Halifax Clarity cards we had as purchase/travel backup cards.

trient

The best non-Amex rewards card these days seems to be the HSBC Premier credit card (admittedly, only for premier members).  For voucher rewards (Amazon, Sainsbury's, M&S) the conversion rate is 0.33%.  All other reward cards AFAIK only give up to 0.25% on general spending (ie non shop specific, like Amazon, Tesco etc).

D3xt3r5L4b

trient said:

The best non-Amex rewards card these days seems to be the HSBC Premier credit card (admittedly, only for premier members).  For voucher rewards (Amazon, Sainsbury's, M&S) the conversion rate is 0.33%.  All other reward cards AFAIK only give up to 0.25% on general spending (ie non shop specific, like Amazon, Tesco etc).

The John Lewis card offers 1.25% on JL/Waitrose spend and 0.25% elsewhere.

Likewise the Amazon Platinum card offers Amazon Points at a rate of 0.75% on Amazon spends and 0.25% elsewhere, but as a Prime Member it offers 1.50% on Amazon spends and still 0.25% elsewhere - so it's a good deal if you're a Prime Member and certainly more rewarding than other cards.

Other than that you're left with the Virgin Atlantic cards (in both free and chargeable formats) as being quite rewarding in terms of offering "Virgin Points", or the HSBC Premier Cards (in both iterations) if you qualify for them.

trient

D3xt3r5L4b said:
Other than that you're left with

Hence my point about general spending, not store-specific cards.  Both Amazon/JL/VA etc. will give better perks for their own brands, but not more than 0.25% elsewhere.  Which makes sense as it has to be under the 0.3% CC interchange fees cap otherwise they would make a loss (which apparently is the case with HSBC).

VXman

Well, finally got my act together and sent off required docs to Barclaycard and now am  the proud recipient of a £200 credit limit on a Barclaycard reward card! I guess that'll be fine if I just pay off the balance at the end of each day
I have now uploaded payslips so they may increase the limit a little. I've come a long way from my MBNA card £20,000 limit.

Grumpy_chap

Congratulations on achieving the Barclaycard Reward Card.:)
They seem to have heavily tightened their criteria of late.  They were regularly bombarding me with offers to take a card, but I had no offers recently but do need to obtain another CC.  The Barclaycard Rewards card seemed the best so did their eligibility checker this week and was declined (or advised not eligible).

I think many sources of credit have massively tightened the criteria.  I do wonder how much this is all just a big over-reaction and whether we will shortly return to something a bit more normal in this regard.  While the banks can't set themselves up for large amounts of bad debt, they only make money by lending so these tight criteria will harm their business volumes.  That could be permanently if the tighter credit is in place for long enough that people change their behaviours and save up for things rather than "I want it all and I want it now"?