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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:

Nectar American Express

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

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 card

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.)

Comments (135)

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

  • richie says:

    i used these £25 cards to pay off part of my Hayes and Jarvis hotel booking

  • Squillion says:

    This is ridiculous 😉

    It surely won’t last long. Just paid £250 into my council tax account as a test.

    With a bit of cut & pasting it doesn’t take too long.

  • Rohan says:

    WOW! Good find. Could i ask as i am confused, It seems that the best would be to buy online voucher to pay HMRC, hotel bookings that dont accept Amex etc. . But these seem to come only in 25 £ units. I would quite like to get the 150 tesco bonus as well, So could i go to the till with £200 pounds worth of vouchers and would this give me 600 points automatically?? I would be using amex for this, so essentially that will count towards my target spend, and i could use this towards HMRC without a CC surcharge?

    • Rob says:

      Yes, yes and yes.

      Just done a test HMRC payment with the 3V card and it went through just fine.

      • Rohan says:

        🙂 🙂 🙂
        This sounds too good, off to tesco, we only have a metro, hopefully they would be stocking this 3v card

        alternatively would have to go morrisons but their fuel promotion is quite good, however on morrisons website they dont mention 3v card, would have to test this out

  • Squillion says:

    Paying council tax in advance! – never felt so good in my life 😉

    • James67 says:

      Yes lucky you lol. Missed the boat on this one. I was too esger to pay 3 council tax bills on my new AA visa a week ago…if only!

  • FromTheRail says:

    I will be using this later but found this in the T&C’s under where can I buy Tesco gift cards

    “You can only buy 5 Gift Cards at one time and you cannot buy more than £2,000 worth of Visa Gift Cards in any 12 month period”

    • Squillion says:

      I don’t think the checkout girls really care about 8 going through at a time.

      • FromTheRail says:

        just re-read the top bit and found it there, stupid me for not reading it again fully before posting

    • Gordon says:

      I have purchased 20 cards today in two batches of 8 and one of 4. The points show up on the receipts as expected and there was no objection at the till, apart from the bar codes which their reader seems to have difficulty with! Local Tesco has now run out 🙁

  • richie says:

    is it possible to buy 5 cards on your credit card everyday. every evening pay the bill online with the cards.
    do this for 8 days and you have reached the max £2000 but also gained 6000 clubcard points. obviously you would need to live near a Tesco and i suppose you could do it in multiple transactions

    • Gordon says:

      See my comment above. MBNA and Amex don’t accept these cards as a method of paying their bills. I tested this earlier today. Its best for HMRC, council tax etx as mentioned in various posts

      • rasper says:

        I tried for an8ther company as well. I think 3v just won’t allow it. But does anyone know if the other visa can be used for this?

  • Phillip says:

    If they are treated as Debit Cards, surely you can pay off Charge/Credit card balances which you can dictate the value of? Same with other utility bills such as mobile phones etc.

    • Rob says:

      They live in a separate world from debit cards and credit cards. These cards are for the ‘purchase of goods and services’ and is meant to exclude financial services.

  • Yozza1977 says:

    Just noticed n 3v’s terms and conditions these limits:
    There are some limits to 3V Visa Numbers that you should be aware of.

    The balance on any 3V Visa Number can never exceed £1000.
    You cannot activate 3V Visa Numbers with a total value greater than £1625 in any 365-day period without providing sufficient evidence of your ID and home address.

    You cannot redeem more than £650 from your 3V Visa numbers in any 365-day period without providing sufficient evidence of your ID and home address.

    • Rohan says:

      thats interesting, so cant really clear more than 1625 of a HMRC tax bill? does this affect your credit rating the moment they start asking for ID etc. ?

      • Rob says:

        No. It is money laundering regulations. And all they will ask for is a copy of a utility bill or similar, nothing difficult.

      • Chris says:

        Each member of your family could have a 3V account. Makes no difference when it comes to pay HRMC who’s 3V account the card is registered in.

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