Big news – you can now transfer ALL TopCashback money to Avios

For over a year now, there has been a fantastic deal available for earning Avios very cheaply from cashback site TopCashback.  You could convert up to £50 of cashback per year into Tesco Clubcard points.  Those Clubcard points could then be transferred to avios.com or British Airways Executive Club.

This allows you to effectively ‘buy’ Avios points for just 0.39p each.

(£1 of TopCashback gets you 105 Clubcard points which gets you 240 Avios or 250 Virgin Flying Club miles).

You can read the full details of how to earn Avios from TopCashback in this article.

For heavy cashback earners, the £50 annual cap was an issue – although you could get around it by having a separate TopCashback account for anyone else who shares your Avios household account.

There is now a way of transferring your cashback ABOVE £50 to Avios.

Yesterday TopCashback announced that you can convert cashback money DIRECTLY into avios.com or British Airways Executive Club.

Before you get too excited, check out the conversion rate.  It is 1 Avios point per 1p of cashback.

As you get the 5% bonus for not taking your earnings as pure cash, you are actually getting 1.05 Avios per 1p of cashback.  This means you are paying 0.95p per Avios.

0.95p per Avios is a lot cheaper than you can buy them from British Airways.  It is not a fantastic deal, however.  My general recommendation on Head for Points is that – unless you specifically need to top-off your account for a redemption – 0.75p is a decent target to aim at.  You will never lose money at 0.75p.

For a lot of redemptions, 1p to 1.25p is roughly the value you will achieve.  You should therefore think carefully before turning something VERY flexible (ie cash!) into something which is not flexible (ie an Avios point) and which might not be worth much more than the cash alternative.

One possible upside is that this is a cheap way of stopping Avios expiring if your account has had no activity in three years, although I doubt many Head for Points readers fall into that category.

You can read more about this new deal at the TopCashback blog.

If you are not already a TopCashback member, you can sign up via this link.  This is my refer-a-friend link, which unfortunately doesn’t get you anything special but does help support Head for Points.

PS.  There is one piece of small print to this deal.  Cashback from travel companies cannot be transferred to Avios.

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 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 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.)