150 Clubcard points per £50 Amazon purchase with 3V (and other uses)

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

The easiest way to earn a lot of Avios points or Virgin Flying Club miles in 2013 was with 3V Virtual Visa cards – as long as your local Tesco sold them.

They look like this:

3V card

…. and, as with all non-Tesco branded gift cards, you earn 150 Clubcard points for every £50-worth you buy. This meant 360 Avios or 375 Virgin Atlantic miles. Because Tesco accepts American Express, it was also an easy way to increase your spending if you needed to hit a sign-up bonus on a new Amex card.

The deal was so great because you could use 3V cards for financial transactions. Most blatantly, you could pay them into certain bank accounts so you got your entire £25 per card back immediately. The only limit to the number of free Avios you could earn via this route was the number of 3V Virtual Visa cards stocked in your local Tesco.

The wheels came off the bus in December 2013. Overnight, 3V changed their acceptance rules. The cards are now rejected if you attempt to use them for a financial services transaction.

However, Tesco is still selling 3V cards at face value.

You still earn 150 Clubcard points for every £50-worth you buy.

If you use an Amex Gold to buy them, you would also earn 100 Membership Rewards points as it is a supermarket purchase which earns double points.

Where can you still use them?

I saw my first 3V cards for at least a year whilst on holiday last week. I bought £50-worth and redeemed them for Amazon gift certificates at £25 each.

This is the easiest way, for most people, to redeem 3V cards. You can order Amazon gift certificates for yourself and pay them into your Amazon account. You then have a credit balance which you can work through for future purchases.

(If you do this, please consider using our Amazon affiliate link by clicking here or clicking the Amazon logo in the right-hand margin. We earn a small commission on each gift card purchase. You cannot earn cashback anywhere else for buying Amazon gift cards so you don’t lose anything.)

There are some other places that still take 3V cards. If you have regular monthly payments to any of these companies then it is something you should take a look at:

Sky

Vodafone

EDF, Scottish & Southern and E.ON

TV Licensing

Parent Pay

Virgin Media

Apple Store e-gift cards bought direct

You can also purchase gift vouchers via TopGiftCards, High Street Vouchers and Love2Shop.

If you have a direct debit for bill payment with any of the above, you can use a 3V card to make a partial payment onto your account. The next direct debit will then be adjusted.

Some merchants may put a £1 block on your card when you attempt to use it as a security check. The maximum you can then pay is £24. The remaining £1 will be released within 7-10 days and can be used to buy an Amazon gift voucher.

Some merchants will also restrict the number of different card numbers that a single customer can use to 2+ in a 24 hour period. Do not expect to be able to use up 10 3V cards with the same merchant on the same day.

Any updates to the above list are welcome.

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.

Andrew says:

8 Aug8 August 08:02

Check out the Tesco Metro near the cnr of Uxbridge and Askew Rds in W3. Just saying.
N says:

8 Aug8 August 08:15

Yorkshire Water take them. They say they will charge 1.5%, but actually don’t. So you need to pay £24.63, they add 1.5%, and the full £25 gets credited to your account.
- blenz101 says:
  
  8 Aug8 August 12:31
  
  I’ve used this route – they do charge the 1.5% which is what you kinda say but don’t?!
TimS says:

8 Aug8 August 08:19

My local Tesco has always got 3v in stock but it is east London, not central.

One other local Tesco that always used to have 3v no longer has any, though they still have all the other gift cards. Since the December policy change I have never been unable to find 3v cards somewhere local.

I use Sky and Vodafone to churn mine.
squills says:

8 Aug8 August 08:30

Southwestwater OK
squills says:

8 Aug8 August 08:32

Can you still send change to Amazon gift cards? A while back I used to buy things normally online (say) £22 at Halfords – then send the £3 balance to Amazon.
- TimS says:
  
  8 Aug8 August 08:44
  
  Yes you can. minimum 10p
  - idrive says:
    
    8 Aug8 August 09:01
    
    last time i did it was £1, are you sure about £0.10?
    - Louie-m says:
      
      8 Aug8 August 09:30
      
      It was £1 when I did it earlier this week.
    - Simon says:
      
      8 Aug8 August 09:33
      
      The text on the Amazon Gift Certificate page says the minimum is £1 but the amount field lets you put in 10p and above.
      - pazza2000 says:
        
        8 Aug8 August 11:45
        
        Yes I can confirm, I purchased an 80p gift cert last week. I would have OCD over leaving any balance on these cards 😉
Brian says:

8 Aug8 August 08:32

As somebody pointed out above, High Street Vouchers are indeed charging £1 as a transaction fee. They sneakily add this right at the end, so if you’re buying less than £25, you probably won’t notice. If you’re emptying a £25 card, it won’t work, since there will be insufficient funds. HOWEVER, the Love2Shop website is essentially the same thing as HSV and has all the same vouchers. I believe they are the same company. And Love2Shop doesn’t (yet) charge the transaction fee. So that’s the way to go.

Most of my shopping is done at Sainsbury’s, because of convenience – I enjoy doubling up with Nectar points AND bonus Clubcard points! :))
- James Ward says:
  
  8 Aug8 August 08:36
  
  Are you certain this is true? I just made a purchase of £25 John Lewis vouchers and didn’t get any additional charge. Maybe it’s only applied to certain vouchers?
  - Brian says:
    
    8 Aug8 August 09:21
    
    You were on the HSV website? If so, then maybe it does just apply to certain vouchers – I was going for Sainsbury’s – or perhaps they changed it again. This was on 31 July, I believe.
    - Phillip says:
      
      8 Aug8 August 09:34
      
      Following comments above, I just checked again too and the £1 is no longer added! Good result!
CV3V says:

8 Aug8 August 08:46

Glasgow City Council accept them via Santander BillPay. IIRC if you overpay, call them up and they will send a refund.

Out of curiosity, how many cards did people manage to churn in the old days? When I look at my 3V emails containing the security details I have 560 emails (so 560 cards activated!) to date. However I think some people will have done way more than me.
- nick says:
  
  8 Aug8 August 08:58
  
  Did you have to do the proof of identity thing with 3v?
  
  By the way if anybody does have a way to monetise these things easily, I suggest you don’t share it on a public forum. This is basically manufactured spending and as soon as a few people get a sniff of it and go crazy, your loophole will be closed.
  - CV3V says:
    
    8 Aug8 August 09:10
    
    Yes of course, sent them the required ID, not much hassle and used Post Office to verify documents (after telling them it was a service they offer!)
    
    There are still way(s) to do these en masse, only reason i say that is that i think someone still clears out the pegs at my local Tesco when they are restocked. I have 3 large Tesco’s near me, 2 always stocked, one always empty.
    - Nick says:
      
      8 Aug8 August 10:16
      
      Thanks – I’ve shied away from breaching the threshhold for providing ID info as i assumed it would bring scrutiny to my account.
      
      I personally have a way to get through a lot of these as I’ve got a £25k bill to pay and the person I’m paying will tolerate my chipping away at it in £25 chunks. However, that situation is unusual and to be honest it is quite a painful process. I do find that I get through about £100 a month on them using them for their proper purpose – online shopping. I did think I’d found the daddy of all MS opportunities with these recently, but the fact that you can’t use 3v for merchants that used Verified by Visa as part of their payment system stopped me.
      
      Availability of 3vs remains a mystery though. I’ve never seen one in central london, and only managed to pick up 3 or 4 at all in south east london. However, there are certain supermarkets in other cities where there are hundreds, all the time – even back when the NS&I route was open. I guess this is because there are far more avios hunters in London simply because those who use non-London airports have far less use for them.
    - BP says:
      
      8 Aug8 August 11:06
      
      That’ll be me 🙂 Only problem is that any amount over 4 cards don’t activate. Do you also have this issue?
      - Singing Dwarf says:
        
        8 Aug8 August 11:11
        
        Yes.
        
        At the height of the MS, I never had any problems activating eight at a time. On the past three occasions when I have tried to activate six at a time, at least one has failed.
        
        Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to ask them to sub-total after each card 🙁
  - Andrew says:
    
    9 Aug9 August 08:42
    
    Interesting perspective on life.
    
    I discovered these cards last year and sent details to Raffles, which prompted the whole series of posts and a number of people doing very well.
    
    As it happens I only got through a few k as supply very quickly dried up in my local stores. It did cross my mind that this might happen but thought it was something worth sharing, for benefit of the wider points community. I’ve no doubt however that I wasn’t the first person to come across this loophole, and many others were quietly benefiting for a while before it went big.
    
    Just my two pennyworth.
Oh! Matron! says:

8 Aug8 August 09:00

I normally end up getting some old dear at the checkout when doing the 3V cards, who gets flustered after the first one 🙁
- Dave B says:
  
  8 Aug8 August 18:30
  
  Take care they activate , then quite consuming admin ahead of you for 75 points!
- Polly says:
  
  9 Aug9 August 07:11
  
  Always ask them to sub total each card, then you can be mostly sure they have activated. Nightmare when they don’t.