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.

Daleroxxu says:

30 Apr30 April 17:02

Could you use the virtual cards with PayPal to send the money to a family member (or friend, can withdraw it then give it back to you)?

Paypal fees are 3.4% + 20p per transaction. So assuming 4 x £25 gift cards it would cost £4.20 per £100 transferred. This would earn us 300 Clubcard points (720 Avios) and 200 Amex MR (double points for supermarket purchases in first year on PR Gold card.) = 920 Avios. So 0.456 pence per Avios. Bargain.

Anyone in possession of one of these cards care to test my theory?
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 17:30
  
  Not sure. The 3V website has some very specific rules about Paypal use. You certainly cannot withdraw money from the card into your Paypal account and send it to your bank account. Not sure if the other Visa cards with the fee work differently.
- Rasper says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 17:55
  
  It’s easy enough to use for paypal but I don’t know if they can be used to send money, or if doing that would raise suspicion a la money laundering etc.
  - sandgrounder says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 18:26
    
    Be careful with Paypal- lots of nasty stories on the net, they can freeze your funds at the drop of a hat, and they are pretty quick to spot and move against manufactured spend.
ComeFlyWithMe123 says:

30 Apr30 April 18:03

If you don’t have council tax bills to pay, you can play about with the fees to get a good pence per avios ratio

The maximum that 1 prepay number can hold is £1000. Assuming you get your hands on the £50 cards, that’s 20 cards.

It costs £1.75 each to transfer a balance – 19 balances = £33.25
It costs £3.50 to transfer to your bank account = £3.50
Total expenditure = £36.75

You can lower your expenditure if you have the £5 off £40 spend voucher.

Using your Amex Gold to pay for vouchers (double points 1st year) = 2000 MR / avios
Clubcard points 3000 – converted at usual rate (£2.50 – 600avios) = 7200 avios
Total Avios = 9200

3675 / 9200 = 0.40 pence per avios which isn’t bad as you are also spending to hit 2-4-1 (in my case)

I hope my maths is correct!
- Rasper says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 18:24
  
  As the 3V’s available if £50 denominations? I thought they’re only in 25’s. That would change it to (1.75×39)+3.5= 71.75
  
  71.75/9200 would give 0.78p/avios. Not bad though.
  
  But there is a 650 redemption limit in 1 year, unless they further verfiy you’re ID, but they don’t stipulate how
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 20:22
  
  Ironically, I did an almost identical calculation this morning for a post tomorrow.
  
  Although I don’t think there is much more to say tomorrow that is new! I will summarise it all for the 950 email readers and the RSS people who never see the comments, though.
Steve says:

30 Apr30 April 18:12

Does anyone know if you can use the Visa Debit cards to pay for your shopping in Tesco?
ie 150 avios for the card + 100 avios for the actual spend + 50 clubcard points for spending in store?
- Steve says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 18:15
  
  Edit: meant to say 150 cc points + 100 avios for spend + 50 cc points
  - Rasper says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 18:29
    
    I don’t see why not. 150 points for buying the card, the another 50 when spending it on groceries instore, or on petrol (if you’re using a tesco cc as a clubcard)
    
    The would have to be the visa branded giftcard though, and the only extra clubcard points are the 150 for buying the card, which cost £3.95 (you were going to get 50 for shopping there anyway) so 1.1p per avios.
sandgrounder says:

30 Apr30 April 18:24

I’ve bought the last two on the shelf from my local Tesco this evening and paid £50.00 to HMRC. I will try to get hold of a few more before the inevitable shutdown happens!

Has anyone got the bottle to overpay HMRC by a daft amount and then have the funds repaid to their current account? 🙂
Squillion says:

30 Apr30 April 19:44

I think I’ve re-discovered my mojo 😉

This is great. Chasing round the countryside grabbing the cards – just like the old days.

And the best thing is the staff are all smiley this time.
Iain Beale says:

30 Apr30 April 19:58

HUGE stack of them in my local tesco. Got £150 worth and used a £5 off voucher too. Paid off some of my council tax with them. My councils website doesn’t seem to allow pasting into fields or remembering anything I’ve typed in before so it’s a bit of a faff. It might just be me being thick though.
Anon says:

30 Apr30 April 20:05

Funny how you forgot this Raffles. There were comments about using 3v cards on one of your previous giftcards posts. You even talked about them on PTS. 😉

For what it’s worth you’ve been able to get points on these since the promotion started even if it was against Tesco’s T&Cs.

I’ve been using them on my Sky and Water bills no problem.
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 20:18
  
  Truth is that I had never seen one.
  
  The post today was meant to about the fact that the Visa cards with the fee now counted for the 150 points promo. That was new news, at least to me, and was meant to be the focus of todays post.
  
  I only mentioned in passing that someone had mentioned the virtual cards again.
  
  It was purely by chance that I passed Covent Garden Metro last night, popped in on the off chance and found the 3V cards for the first time.
  - Squillion says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 20:21
    
    Glad you did 😉
    
    Made my day.
Louie says:

30 Apr30 April 21:16

Can someone explain to me how 3V make money on these cards?
- Rob says:
  
  30 Apr30 April 21:19
  
  1. £2 per month fee from month 9
  2. They keep ALL the money on your card after 12 months
  3. Fees for combining cards (£1.75) and withdrawing to bank (£3.50)
  - Rasper says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 21:32
    
    I think they must be targetted towards people who wouldn’t normally get a visa to do online purchases. It strikes me that the main income for the company make money on the fee to join up cards to make large purchases, and on weird funny numerical balances that people forget about after 9 months.
    
    I can confirm the 3v is good for amazon gift certificates, so if you have some money left on a 3v that you’ll forget, or is too small to purchase something you would want to buy online, as long as you have over 10p convert it to amazon.
    Also if you were planning a big spend on amazon it’s a nice way to earn cc points.
    
    Raffles, seeing as today’s theme was the branded visa, not the 3v, did you buy any branded ones yet? And have you found any imaginative uses for them?
    - Rob says:
      
      30 Apr30 April 22:22
      
      The branded ones worked fine to HMRC, didn’t try paying my card bill. These are theoretically ‘proper’ debit cards so may be more flexible. Not super cheap Avios, though, due to the £3.95 per £50 fee, for 360 Avios plus whatever your credit card earns.
  - Squillion says:
    
    30 Apr30 April 21:36
    
    I think 3V will also make a % when the cards are used for purchases from retailers.