Earning free Avios points with pay.com virtual Visa gift cards (Part 2)

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In Part 1 of this article today (click here), I looked at what pay.com cards are and how you can buy them. This part looks at how to use them.

You can, obviously, use your pay.com card anywhere online for making an online purchase of a physical item. They are not meant to work for purchases of services or the payment of bills.

If you have some money left over on a part-used pay.com card, the easiest way to redeem it is by purchasing Amazon gift e-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.

Here is a screenshot of one I redeemed yesterday to show that it works OK:

Amazon screenshot

Here are some of the other places – not online retailers – which are known to accept pay.com cards and hopefully still work. If you have regular monthly payments to any of these companies then it is something you should take a look at:

Vodafone – if you are on direct debit, there is a time window between your bill being generated and the direct debit being taken when you can make a direct payment online. My timing is out and I cannot demonstrate this, unfortunately.

Sky – as you can see below, I successfully made a £25 payment to my account which will reduce my next direct debit:

Sky bill

BT, Talk Talk

EDF, Scottish & Southern, Ovo and E.ON

TV Licensing

High Street Vouchers – here is a receipt for a £25 Waitrose / John Lewis voucher which I ordered yesterday (free postage):

John Lewis screenshot 2

Parent Pay

Inland Revenue – you can pay your self-assessment income tax using pay.com cards. However, you must use the WorldPay payment site and not the Santander one. Here is a test payment I made:

HMRC screenshot

Virgin Media

Apple Store e-gift cards bought direct

Council Tax – varies by local authority but they are often accepted as Visa Debit cards

Some merchants – PayPal, I think, for a start – 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.

Please let me know if you have any updates to this list.

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.

Tilly71 says:

15 Jul15 July 12:42

These terms are BS, think stores make up their own rules as they go along. I purchased a largish batch a few days ago with no restrictions and CS involved.
Ask the to rescan the problem card again, this usually resolves the problem I have found or go to CS where they never seem to fail for some reas on in my experience. Just wip the receipt away as quickly as poss to prevent any unwanted attention to your cc balance .
Nick says:

15 Jul15 July 13:00

My local Tesco (regular, but smallish) store has about 60 cards……so I started with 4 and plan to clean them out 🙂
James67 says:

15 Jul15 July 13:36

I haven’t done any cards since the 3V days. Can I still use my old 3V account to activate the new pay cards or do I need to start all over? Thanks.
- Fenny says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 13:41
  
  Yes, the old account still works.
  - James67 says:
    
    15 Jul15 July 15:39
    
    Thanks, now I just have to figure whether 6000 avios is worth the pain of processing 40 cards. I had a whole carrier bag full of them when NS&I was the game but not sure I can take the tedium anymore.
    - Jason says:
      
      15 Jul15 July 17:31
      
      James67
      
      Would it be easier if you got 7200 Avios for those 40 cards?
      - James67 says:
        
        15 Jul15 July 18:16
        
        72,000 might 🙂 Despite the benefits, I got so sick of the sight of them last time but will probably use the odd card here and there when it is both simple and sensible to do so.
    - dee jay says:
      
      21 Jul21 July 00:41
      
      If you have a barcode scanner less than 1 hour and you should have 40 done and spent
Wally1976 says:

15 Jul15 July 15:26

If it’s any use to anyone, I have successfully used these cards online with Tesco Mobile and Extra Energy.
- Mucky says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 17:53
  
  Wally if there is credit on your account did extra energy return the money to the 3V cards or to your bank account?
  - Wally1976 says:
    
    16 Jul16 July 08:47
    
    This is yet to be seen Mucky. I switched my supply away from them just over a month ago and am currently chasing the refund (they haven’t even issued a bill yet and I don’t just mean the final bill but ANY bill and I joined them last September!).
Froggitt says:

15 Jul15 July 15:47

The problem when cards are not authorised is that the error message says something like “pay.com is down – please try later”. Which is totally untrue, they just haven’t waited for the authorisation before going on to the next card.
Mark says:

15 Jul15 July 16:02

Whilst I am an AVID reader of HfP and have actively used many of the articles here to benefit from great deals I feel the need, like others, to point out the glaringly obvious:

Just as with Martin Lewis and MSE any article of this kind that appears on HfP signals the death knell for any viable CC point earning opportunity; particularly those that work out at sub 1p per CC point. It’s great to read about and about others making it work, but I’m sure we’d all rather be able to make it work for ourselves and gives the likes of Mr. T a bit more detective work rather than handing it all over on a silver platter.

Just something to think about in a time when collecting CC points in the way that “we” do is becoming increasingly difficult…
- Polly says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 17:20
  
  I agree Mark. In a way. I am glad they closed off the financial institution loophole last year, as it was getting out of hand. Let’s not kill off the golden goose just yet. It’s fine if we find some of our utilities accept them and hmrc. Let’s just run with those that do take them, as opposed to seeking out ways to burn them. If the unis don’t accept them, then just pay with your credit cards instead of the direct debit. I called up to pay before each term started. I did feed in 60 cards James 67! To pay my service charge. Just did 10 every day, but they questioned it. They may stop me next time. The TV licence is a good one also. It’s just luck if you can use them. But let’s try to be moderate in their use. I always think of them as bonus avios. Sweet that they are back though! Also best to stick to 4 at each till though.
  - bob says:
    
    15 Jul15 July 17:49
    
    love you Polly
    
    but anybody who wants to do as many as they like should just do exactly that
    
    no need to hold back
  - bob says:
    
    15 Jul15 July 22:26
    
    what’s the problem with fielding a call from their fraud team?
    
    they’re doing their job
    
    you’re doing nothing illegal
    
    just explain what you’re doing re collecting points
    
    they quickly get it in my experience and let you carry on inputting different £25 card numbers
- bob says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 18:12
  
  do not agree – you seem to advocate secrecy
- James67 says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 18:23
  
  To some extent yes, and I have a feeling the spire elite via virgin will go soon. Not that I’m blaming Rob, I would like to do it myself and would not have known had he not posted it. I’m not in a position to do it until next clubcard statement so hopefully it’ll last a few weeks yet. I have my doubts thought, Juhn posted on loyaltylobby today that the dining upgrade route has been scrapped so it seems IHG are on the warpath.
- TheTraveller says:
  
  18 Jul18 July 22:16
  
  Call me a cynic – but you could argue its in Robs interest to get routes to ‘easy’ Avios like this closed down.
  
  The harder it is to earn points, the more traffic will come Robs way – hence he has more weight with advertisers and is able to generate more revenue from this site.
  
  Can’t argue with his logic!
  - Rob says:
    
    19 Jul19 July 11:40
    
    It is in my self interest to promote the collection of cheap Avios in any way possible! No collectors means no site!
  - dee jay says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 00:43
    
    A happy avios collector will be a happy reader
Michael says:

15 Jul15 July 16:12

British Airways holidays – I had a £4000 holiday which I very tediously paid with V3 cards, it took me 2 weeks going through a few each night …but I managed to rack up 28,000 airmiles plus another 6,000 using my BA Amex card to purchase them.

You can only pay £24 from each £25 voucher. BA hold the other £1 then refund it back to the card. I then transferred each pound to Amazon.

Very long winded but 34,000 versus 12,000 just using the BA card on its own.

I also pay Scottish Power
debs says:

15 Jul15 July 21:31

everytime I try and use one it fails
is the cardolder name the name I entered into the pay.com website?
confused
- bob says:
  
  15 Jul15 July 22:23
  
  yes