Cashback on reward credit cards

zilla6

How is the cashback worked out? Is it on the total annual/month spend, or is it on every transaction? Curious as if I make a lot of small purchases, the cashback isn't worth calculating!

[Deleted User]

Check the terms of the card in question. You'll generally see the accumulated total each month with it being paid annually. 

Whether it's calculated per transaction or on each spend makes no difference, unless there is a minimum transaction value to qualify, or you only earn cashback on whole pounds spent.

[Deleted User]

My Lloyds/Halifax ones update monthly to show what you earned so £1000 spend = £2.50 on the total.

However, yes it's on every transaction but if you spend £10 you'd get £0.025 so with rounding you'd probably not get too much with lots of small transactions. Do note those two just put it on your card as a credit, you don't get money per se. The Lloyds one is paid in January regardless, the Halifax one was always based on 12 months from when card was opened. 

PRAISETHESUN

As above it differs depending on the terms of the particular card.

Amex for example pays cashback on every transaction, paid annually on the anniversary of opening your account. Amounts are rounded to the nearest whole pence (eg. 0.5% of £9.99 is 4.99p, rounded down to 4p), so the maths works out worse for multiple smaller transactions as opposed to single larger ones.

jbrassy

As others have said, it depends on the card.

Amex pays cashback per transaction, so if you buy something for £4.99 you get 3p (0.75%) cashback. The cashback is paid annually.

Capital One sums up the amount you have spent over the month then calculates the cashback based on that. So if you spend £100 over a month, you get 50p (0.5%) cashback. This again is paid annually.

Barclaycard pay it per transaction as per Amex. However Barclaycard give you the option to have it paid annually or monthly.  

jon81uk

Depends on the card.
My Virgin Atlantic one is a straightforward 0.75points per pound and you can get fractions of a point on the credit card which are rounded when added to my Virgin flying club (so 995.73 on the statement becomes 996 points).

Whereas my MBNA cashback card gives 1p per £2 per transaction, so if you spend £3.99 you only get 1p. Its the transactions th matter on that one not the overall spend.

zilla6

Thanks for the replies. I've just got a Barclaycard Reward, which gives 0.25%. So I was wondering if I make lots of small purchases, e.g.£1, if they will amount to anything. Can't find anything in T&C yet, guess I'll find out when I get the first statement.

TOP_CAT

Why dont you make lots £1 or small purchases on your barclaycard reward card this march and next month work it out and report back here the cashback amount and total spend?
With my point 5% cashback barclaycard I can request the cashback monthly online and its payed in the first days of the month .
I think it just rounds cashback up to the nearest pence on the pound spent in barclaycards favour .....I dont really know .

Fingerbobs

I have an old (ex-Egg Money) Cashback Barclaycard still giving 0.5%, and the cashback appears to be calculated on the cumulative total spend each statement period, so all the small transactions count. I would guess other Cashback Barclaycards would work in the same way. 
(In fact, all of the cashback credit cards I've held over many years have all worked like this. I think Amex is an exception.) 

Dandytf

jbrassy said:

As others have said, it depends on the card.

Amex pays cashback per transaction, so if you buy something for £4.99 you get 3p (0.75%) cashback. The cashback is paid annually.

Capital One sums up the amount you have spent over the month then calculates the cashback based on that. So if you spend £100 over a month, you get 50p (0.5%) cashback. This again is paid annually.

Barclaycard pay it per transaction as per Amex. However Barclaycard give you the option to have it paid annually or monthly.  

Interesting, I'm recent Amex card user, I wondered what happens with my building cashback credit,
is your comment for all Amex cards, think mines is Platinum or similar.

thanks

[Deleted User]

Deleted_User said:

My Lloyds/Halifax ones update monthly to show what you earned so £1000 spend = £2.50 on the total.

However, yes it's on every transaction but if you spend £10 you'd get £0.025 so with rounding you'd probably not get too much with lots of small transactions. Do note those two just put it on your card as a credit, you don't get money per se. The Lloyds one is paid in January regardless, the Halifax one was always based on 12 months from when card was opened. 

Just to confirm this, I put on a large spend this month onto the Lloyds one and the cashback has immediately gone up based on that transaction, so they at least seem to do it per transaction, not on monthly spend total.