Tesco Visa gift cards DO now qualify for 150 bonus Clubcard points on £50 spend

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For a surprisingly long time now (over six months) Tesco has been offering 150 bonus Clubcard points when you spend £50 on gift cards in-store.

Here is the Tesco webpage which outlines the deal and here is one of my earlier articles on it.

There were two exceptions to which gift cards counted for this promotion. You were not allowed to buy Tesco gift cards (makes sense!) and you were not allowed to buy Visa debit cards.

Tesco has now changed the rules. The Visa debit cards DO now count for the 150 bonus Clubcard points bonus.

In-store signage has not been changed so you will still see notices showing that they do not count. However, it is on the Tesco web site. Go here and scroll down to the section on Visa gift cards, and you will see:

Do I get Clubcard points when I buy a Visa Gift Card?

If you’re a Clubcard customer, you’ll earn 150 Clubcard points for every £50 you spend in a single transaction on Branded Gift Cards (including the Visa branded Cards) at the time of purchase.

I have done a test purchase this morning at Canary Wharf and can confirm that it works. 150 Clubcard points were showing on my receipt.

Visa gift cards come with a huge list of terms, conditions and fees. However, there are only four things you need to know:

A £25 card carries a £2.95 fee, a £50 card carries a £3.95 fee

Tesco limits you to £2,000 of purchases per year (not sure how this is tracked) and 5 cards per transaction

You need to register the card before you can use online or by phone, presumably to put a name on file to match up with the card details the retailer enters, but for face to face transactions it can be used immediately. (When you have registered one card, adding additional cards is very quick and painless.)

It is treated as a debit card when you use it

1 hour after buying a £50 card, I was able to use it to pay £50 off my tax bill and it was treated as a debit card with no fee.

How can I benefit from this?

Let’s assume that you have payments for which debit cards are accepted but credit cards or Amex cards are not.

When you buy a £50 Visa debit card, the maths looks like this:

Fee paid: £3.95

Avios points earned from Tesco: 150 Clubcard points = 360 Avios

Avios points earned from BA Premium Plus (as eg): £54 spend = 81 Avios

Total Avios points earned = 441 Avios, or 0.895p per Avios

This is not a bad deal. However, there is an extra benefit – you can use it to put additional spend through whatever American Express card you use in Tesco, which may help you hit a target for a sign-up bonus.

You would also get an even better deal if you saved the Clubcard vouchers for an Avios (or indeed Virgin Flying Club) conversion promotion.

There may be a better deal as well!

Reader Andrew emailed me to say that Tesco is now selling a different sort of Visa gift card. This one is designed exclusively for online shopping.

The pack contains an authorisation number which you input into a website after purchase. You then receive a ‘virtual’ credit card number which can be used online.

Andrew says that these cards do NOT come with a purchase fee! A £25 Visa debit card costs just £25, which you can pay with your Amex in Tesco! He said that he had managed to successfully pay part of his council tax bill online using one.

I have tried to track down one of these ‘virtual’ cards to test it, but I can’t find them. However, I have only been in a couple of Metro stores. Keep an eye out for these ‘virtual’ gift cards next time you are in Tesco.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

Tesco Clubcard

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Jovan says:

30 Apr30 April 08:22

What would be interesting to see is if you can use the virtual VISA to pay [off] your AMEX spend.
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 08:27
  
  Which is what I intend to test today!
  - Scott Nelson says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 08:36
    
    wow, this could get interesting..
- Max says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 08:33
  
  An excellent idea! Surely we can use these debit cards to settle our Credit Card bills!
  - Rome77 says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 08:55
    
    Now that would indeed be nice – I’ve tried paying my AMEX bill with prepaid cards before without success though, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high. Nevertheless, certainly worth a try!!
    - Rob says:
      
      30 Apr30 April 14:16
      
      Tried, and failed
      
      Rang up and tried on the phone as well, also failed
- Sir Stamford says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 09:05
  
  A few years ago, I tried using my eBay prepaid Visa card for certain financial (i.e. non purchase) transactions such as paying off my credit card bill and it didn’t work.
  
  Let’s see if these work. Naturally if they work, it could be a game changer.
  
  Sir Stamford
Chris says:

30 Apr30 April 08:40

I bought multiple virtual ones at the tail end of last year to reach the minimum spend on my Gold Amex. A few points. Don’t buy more that £200 at a time at a Tesco till (the till cant handle more than that and just removes any extra from the transactions before you pay – you then have to go through all the receipts to figure out which ones actually got removed). Keep the receipts. I had instances where the cashier managed to scan the same card twice – which left me unknowingly with an unactivated card.
I managed to use about £1200 of viritual cards to pay my tax bill last year (£25 at a time over a few months). No issue paying council tax, O2, Virgin Media etc – I would advise only using them where you can make a full £25 payment (so as not to leave any balance). Could NOT pay a credit card though.
- Chris says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 08:45
  
  To add – I tried multiple credit cards from AMEX and MBNA – you cannot use the virutal debit cards to pay them off.
  - simon85 says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 14:25
    
    Some banks/building societies allow you to pay into your savings account with a debit card using online banking (Yorkshire BS for example).
    It’s worth a try. Pay the money in and then take it straight out again. Repeat ad infinitum.
creampuff says:

30 Apr30 April 09:22

The virtual visa with no fees sounds interesting. I can pay my mortgage with a Visa card – even a visa credit card (yes I was incredulous when the bank told me, and I asked them to confirm it several times).

Can I buy one of these virtual visa cards, pay for it with Amex, then put £1500/month mortgage payments through it?
- Chris says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 09:31
  
  You’d have to use 60 virtual cards for £1500/month – activating each one of them individually – and paying in 60 x £25 chunks. Not sure how much time you have on your hands ….
  - Rob says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 09:37
    
    The Visa cards with the fee can be activated in about 20 seconds. Once you have registered with the site, you can add a new card very quickly. All it wants is card number and expiry date.
    
    Not sure about the virtual cards yet.
    - Chris says:
      
      30 Apr30 April 09:47
      
      They virtual ones can probably be activated in a similar amount of time – finding, buying and managing that many though will surely drive you insane 🙂
  - creampuff says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 10:07
    
    Oh yes, if they are limited to £25 then that would be a major PITA !
    
    But what is the point of a £25 card in general? You can hardly do anything with £25.
- Zoe says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 09:43
  
  Which bank is this please?
- AviosNewbie says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 19:40
  
  How is the bank able to do this? it’ll be awesome if rents can be paid with a Visa card. I have a standing instruction with the bank and they just debit my account.
Roger says:

30 Apr30 April 09:27

Gulp! I had just decided to pay my tax bill early and benefit from the 2x miles with my bmi MasterCard and swallowing the 1.4% surcharge when this opportunity comes along.

I’ll be near a Metro on Thursday by when I will have done my sums and can take this further. Thanks, Raffles. 🙂
bensonsmum says:

30 Apr30 April 09:30

Does this mean i could buy Next gift cards to pay off against my outstanding balance and get 150 points for each one i buy?
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 09:36
  
  Yes, I believe from posts I have read elsewhere that this does work.
- Sinizter says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 15:05
  
  I can confirm that you can use your gift card bought from Tesco to pay off your Next account balance.
Gordon B says:

30 Apr30 April 09:53

I bought four of the £25 virtual cards this morning, registered them and then tried to pay both Amex and MBNA bills. Unfortunately it works for neither.
- Chris says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 09:59
  
  And if you check your virutal account (3V I presume?) you see the payment request does hit them – so it is being rejected by 3V (as opposed to Amex or MBNA). My worry is what else might 3V decide to reject if they start to see a disproportinate number of payments (ie maybe they’ll reject payments to HMRC or Councils etc). Clearly there is a cost to them of providing these – and I don’t see how they are recovering any of their costs ,,,
  
  I would not hold onto too many of these virtual cards at any point in time.
- E14 says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 11:40
  
  Did you try over the phone ?
- Tom says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 12:03
  
  Where do you typically find these cards in a Tesco store? I don’t recall ever having seen them..
  - Rob says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 12:16
    
    Gift card rack
BP says:

30 Apr30 April 10:02

Wow, this is great though annoyingly literally yesterday paid off my remaining council tax in full to speed up reaching the AAdvantage card target and had to suck up a CC surcharge at the council (although not surprising). Looks like i could;ve bought Visa vouchers on the AA Amex in Tesco over the next 6 months, i’d still contribute the introductory spend target, been able to leverage the Amex AA card and its superior miles return (rather than having to use the visa direct with the council), avoided the credit card surcharge and then on top got about 9k avios or so via CC. Quite the game changer potentially this… providing i can find someone else who’s ready to pay off their CT (and someone at the council patient enough…)
Gordon B says:

30 Apr30 April 10:06

Chris is correct. It appears as a purchase decline from Amex when you view 3V. The MBNA one doesn’t appear as I don’t think it got beyond MBNA. They ask you to select a card type and as there was no Visa option, I tried Visa debit which didn’t work because of the wrong type.

I am now in the process of trying to pay HMRC online. Not sure how this will work with the 1.4% charge that applies to credit cards. I am not sure if I will need to enter an odd amount of £24.65 which with the 1.4% charge gives the £25 value. Update to follow