Air miles credit card

creditcard123

Hi
I am looking for some advice please.
I have been looking for an air miles credit card, but wanted one I could use free abroad. I currently have a barclaycard Cashback card for everyday use  and a Halifax clarity for using abroad.

Does anyone have any suggestions.
Thanks

lr1277

According to the Head for Points site, there is no current credit card that is forex-fee free and awards airmiles of any description. You could do worse than peruse that site, for the daily articles, the card reviews and the forums.

I maybe wrong on this, but it is possible the Virgin card obviously gives Virgin miles and MAY also be forex free in parts of Europe. But in that case you are limited to the destinations flown by Virgin. I believe Virgin have joined a flying alliance so you may be able to go to other destinations, but you need to do some research on that.

TwiceNightly

The Virgin Atlantic Credit Card is pretty good and as the poster above says, they are part of SkyTeam now so you can use and earn your points on lots of airlines including Air France, KLM, Delta, etc.

Regarding the overseas use, their T's & C's say:

"We will not charge this [non-sterling transaction fee] if the transaction is in Euros, Swedish Kronor or Romanian Lai and it takes place in the UK and European Economic Area (EEA)"

WillPS

One option would be to change your Barclaycard Cashback card to an Avios card then use a Curve card to mitigate the FX fees. You lose S75 doing this tho.

lr1277

Just reread your original post and note you have a Halifax clarity card. Don't you want to keep that card as it gives you free forex transactions?

I am not a Barclaycard holder, but have read some of these things on the Head for Points (HfP) site.

As a Barclaycard holder are you aware you can only have one Barclaycard at a time? If you are thinking of the Barclays Avios card, your best bet would be to see if it is possible to upgrade to the Avios card from within the app. You may not get the sign up bonus (SUB), but you would get any points on spending. If you cancel the Barclaycard, you may have to wait 6 months or longer before you can apply for the Avios card. More details at HfP, both on the articles about the cards and in the forums where there is a board for Barclays avios cards.

Again not a Curve card holder, and I say this as someone who values certainty and not having the rug pulled out from under me.

Back in September 2021, the IHG card provided by Creation was closed by Creation for anyone who used their card with a Curve card. The card cancellation came out of the blue for I assume the majority if not all the card holders. Apparently some people who had not used their IHG card with Curve also had their card closed.

The problem it seemed to me was that Curve operates as a debit card. It is used to front credit cards and any rewards they give. The problem is that Curve collects Debit card fees whereas credit card fees are higher. Those higher fees are required to pay the rewards offered by some credit cards. I do not know what fees were passed from Curve to the card they were fronting.

There are a number of card providers that don't allow their card to be used by Curve. At the moment the Avios Barclaycard allows itself to be fronted by Curve, but that can change at any moment, as found by the users of the IHG card.

As far as I know, Amex do NOT allow their cards to be fronted by Curve.

In terms of forex fee free, you have some options.

The fineco banks that have current accounts that don't impose forex fee on their current account.

The Currensea card is a debit card that fronts your current account. The paid version charges no forex fees either on purchases and I think ATM transactions upto a limit. I did investigate it some time ago but have forgotten the details. It works by your paying for something in a foreign currency. It then direct debits your current account the equivalent amount in pounds. Advantages: 1) the transactions shows in the Currensea app very quickly apparently. 2) I understand if there are insufficient funds in your current account at the time of the transaction, it will be denied, but not entirely sure about this. 3) As it is a debit card, there is not hard credit check on opening. 4). If you require direct debits on your current account, this card's direct debit counts. Disadvantages 1) The direct debit can sometimes take 4-5 days to leave your account.2) I am not sure about this, but the website seems to indicate it requires Open Access banking. As Currensea is not a fully proven entity, I would be nervous about that. But it does help them decide whether to allow the transaction or not. Is my guess.

In terms of gathering airmiles, I would suspect the Amex Gold and the paid Virgin card are best. You have to decide in which mileage program you want to enrol and if you can meet the spending requirements of the chosen card.

MrFrugalFever

WillPS said:

One option would be to change your Barclaycard Cashback card to an Avios card then use a Curve card to mitigate the FX fees. You lose S75 doing this tho.

Would section 75 really apply when spending abroad anyway? Is a UK based credit institution going to be able to apply UK law to a foreign based company? I think you’d also need to evaluate what it is that you’re spending abroad that you’d likely ever need S.75 to come in to play, because if it’s hotel, flights, car hire etc, that’s generally all booked in advanced before you leave the UK and therefore S.75 would apply?

creditcard123

Thanks for your replies. 

Keeping the Halifax clarity is an option. I will have a look at Head of Point. Site.

MorningcoffeeIV

MrFrugalFever said:

WillPS said:

One option would be to change your Barclaycard Cashback card to an Avios card then use a Curve card to mitigate the FX fees. You lose S75 doing this tho.

Would section 75 really apply when spending abroad anyway? Is a UK based credit institution going to be able to apply UK law to a foreign based company? 

They don't need to. The card company is the one with the liability and simply assess what was delivered against what was in the contract.

So yes, S75 would really apply.

WillPS

lr1277 said:

The problem it seemed to me was that Curve operates as a debit card. It is used to front credit cards and any rewards they give. The problem is that Curve collects Debit card fees whereas credit card fees are higher. Those higher fees are required to pay the rewards offered by some credit cards. I do not know what fees were passed from Curve to the card they were fronting.

That wasn't the problem. Curve pays the interchange and Creation got exactly the same from them as they would any miscellaneous merchant.

The problem was that Debit Cards can be used in many situations where Credit Cards can't; for example savings account deposits. This led to a situation where a minority of users would serially max out their cards by paying for an NS&I or other savings deposit on their reward card, fronted by Curve, then withdraw the funds they had deposited and use them to pay off the credit card bill. You could potentially earn hundreds of thousands of IHG points by doing this.

Most lenders closed the door on this some equitable way but Creation instead chose to close the accounts of anybody who had used Curve at all, regardless of how legitimate their spend was (or indeed if they even had spent anything after assigning their card to Curve!).

You're totally right to flag up that using Curve is challenging at times tho. Barclaycard are actually one of the few issuers at this stage who have not taken any action to limit Curve's usefulness - although they are brining in a reward cap of 4x credit limit later this Spring.

I certainly wouldn't want this to be my only option.

lr1277

Thanks @WillPS. I was aware of some of that but not the fee paid by Curve to the underlying credit card.

The bit about NS&I etc I chose not to include as I thought it was rumour and speculation. And it was 4am when I was writing the post so too tired to think clearly.

I happened upon HfP the day after Creation made its announcement. I read the really long thread about the topic where I found tidbits of information where allegedly somebody bought £700k of premium bonds with their IHG card fronted by Curve. Allegedly NS&I complained so Creation cancelled the card. Well that was the speculation at the time.

@Creditcard123 if you go to the HfP forums, there is a thread titled something like 'Is Curve still worth it'. Possibly under the board called 'Other Payment cards'. You can read that thread and decide if Curve is still worth it. But some users on the site treat Curve like Fight Club i.e. Don't talk about Curve. If you find a way of using Curve fronting a rewards credit card, then keep quiet. Some users on there are worried about more card issuers not allowing the use of Curve with their credit card. At least that is my take on the issue.

Marchitiello

In theory one options available would be to use one of the RBS/NatWest Rewards Credit card (that offers also forex fee free) and convert the rewards balance to Avios, but this would give you a poorer return than a straight Avios Card from Barclaycard or Amex (or even HSBC if you qualify for Premier).

The curve route would be a good option with A MasterCard/Visa airline card, but I believe that unless you have a subscription version, it would be capped.

at the end of the day I would want to assess how much of the spending is in GBP vs foreign currency and if therefor e I would be willing to sacrifice on the best GBP earning because of the Forex spend (I personally put most of my spending on the Amex BAPP at 1.5 Avios per £1 and 3 Avios per £1 on BA spend, which is my chosen carrier 90% of the time)