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EXCLUSIVE: Big changes coming to your Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card

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I would like to claim that this story was the work of our crack team of investigative journalists, but I actually owe it to reader Jack.  He posted it in the comments on Saturday night whilst I was on the way to the Hilton Honors Bastille gig with a note saying ‘erm, Rob, you should look at this’.

We have known for some time that the American Express element of the Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card was living on borrowed time.  Amex has cancelled all of its licensing deals with other banks.  The Lloyds Avios Rewards card was withdrawn from the market for new applicants a couple of months ago.

By mistake, I imagine, the terms and conditions of the new Lloyds Avios-earning credit card have been posted online.  (EDIT: link removed as the document has been removed)

We believe that the new card will be called the Lloyds British Airways Mastercard.

This is what is going to happen:

The American Express element is dead.  The card will be a pure Mastercard.

The upgrade voucher seems dead.  It appears that you will no longer get an upgrade voucher for spending £7,000 per year on the card.

There may be no annual fee – it is not mentioned in the new T&Cs

You may start paying FX fees.  There is no mention in the new T&Cs that they are waived.

Here are the earning rates for the new Lloyds British Airways Mastercard:

0.4 Avios per £1 spent in the UK

0.8 Avios per £1 spent outside the UK

0.4 Avios per £1 on balance transfers (but presumably there is a fee attached to these)

One implication of how the rules are written, although it isn’t fully clear, is that Avios will be earned in multiples of £5.  Your actual earning will be less than 0.4 Avios per £1.  Any purchase under £5 will earn nothing.  All other purchases will be rounded down to the nearest £5. 

(The other implication of the wording is that only your total monthly spending is rounded down to the nearest £5, which clearly makes no real difference to what you earn.)

Here is an interesting quirk:

Holders of a Club Lloyds current account will earn an extra 0.1 Avios per £1 (0.2 Avios per £1 for foreign transactions)

This takes you up to 0.5 Avios per £1 for UK spending and 1 Avios per £1 for foreign spending.

For this to kick in, you must have had a Club Lloyds current account for at least six months.

Going forward, with the closure of the Avios Travel Rewards Programme, you will manage your Lloyds credit card account via www.ba.com/lloyds.  This page is not yet live.

When are these changes kicking in?

As the current Lloyds Avios Rewards cards are closed to new applicants, there is no doubt that these changes are for existing cardholders.  I assume that you will receive an email shortly from Lloyds announcing the closing date for the existing cards.

What do I think of the changes?

Frankly, compared to the new Virgin Atlantic credit cards (details here) this will be a very poor product.

The free Virgin Mastercard offers 0.75 Virgin Atlantic miles per £1.  Lloyds is offering you 0.4 Avios instead.

The paid Virgin Atlantic Mastercard offers a whopping 1.5 miles per £1, almost 4x what Lloyds is offering.

The Virgin cards also have the ‘241’ offer, albeit only in Economy unless you have Virgin status.  The new Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards appear to have nothing.  The assumed loss of the upgrade voucher is particularly poor as this was a real boon, especially for solo travellers.

On the upside, assuming there is no annual fee, it will be more generous than the Tesco Clubcard Mastercard (which, note, currently offers 2400 Avios as a sign-up bonus via 1000 free Clubcard points).  It was a little embarrassing that you earned more Avios on the FREE Tesco Clubcard Mastercard (0.3 Avios per £1) than on the £24 Lloyds Avios Rewards Mastercard (0.25 Avios per £1) …..

Of course, if you qualify for it, the HSBC Premier Mastercard (free to Premier current account holders) pays 0.5 Avios per £1.  The HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard offers 1 Avios per £1.

It is roughly equal to the free IHG Rewards Club Mastercard which gets you 1 IHG point per £1 which I value at 0.4p.  I also value 0.4 Avios per £1 via Lloyds at 0.4p.  The IHG card does give you Gold status in IHG Rewards Club as an extra perk, however.

For clarity ….

I can’t be 100% certain that the terms outlined above are fully correct.  It is possible, for example, that the upgrade voucher may be retained but just isn’t mentioned in the terms and conditions …. but that would be odd.  Similarly, it is possible that FX transactions will remain free.  We need to wait for Lloyds to make the full announcement.

In case you’re wondering, I have no idea if Lloyds intends to open up the card to new applicants or not.  Based on my recent conversations with Avios, it isn’t happening in the short term.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus. 

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

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British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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Nectar American Express

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American Express Platinum card Amex

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Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

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Amex Platinum Business American Express

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

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30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

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Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (187)

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

  • Tom1 says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:38

    There is a section about notification of changes that are to your disadvantage, stating 60 days notice will be given.
    So you would hope the same applies to the changes being introduced now, if at all they are.

  • the real harry1 says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:39

    Halifax offers these as well, I got £30 off my council tax bill (£300 on CT thru Paypoint @ Co-Op). Got similar waiting to be used @ Iceland (just going to be 10% off a few pizzas I guess & Sainsbury’s – which might work out with giftcards, do they stock Amazon?

  • Kathy says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:50

    It’ll be a real bummer if the voucher goes! That was very handy for those of us who can’t run up large balances easily.

    The way the game is going I can see my chances to earn enough Avios to redeem for long-haul business class diminishing fast.

  • Marcw says:
    10 Jun10 June 07:58

    even though the Virgin Cards are more attractive, I think they are more of a niche market. It works good if you are interested in going to USA, but for everywhere else, Avios is way better.
    Having said that, if someday AF-KLM flights can be booked with Virgin miles I doubt they will be of any use: with the new FlyingBlue changes, it’s very difficult to find things in the lower redemption tariffs. And then, FlyingBlue values can be very attractive, which I doubt Virgin will match. For instance, you can pretty much travel to the whole of Europe for 7.500 FB miles, including a connection in CDG/AMS. That’s in Economy – Business is way out of that league.
    Id rather take the Lloyds card for “free Avios” than the Virgin card.

    • Alan says:
      10 Jun10 June 09:58

      I thought free connections were no more with the new Flying Blue scheme? It’s been massively devalued, the regular promo fares also have far fewer business options now and only apply if flying direct from CDG/AMS.

      • marcw says:
        10 Jun10 June 12:21

        Let´s put it that way: FlyingBlue does not work like that anymore – it´s not region based. The price (in miles) is calculated based on your origin and destination. As with cash prices, itineraries with connections are now cheaper than non-stop flights. FlyingBlue has this calculator as a guide to check how many miles you need https://www.flyingblue.nl/en/flights/reward-tickets. Now, Promo Awards are based on discounts, so you have to reduce the % from the mile values you get from the calculator. As a example, now SFO has a 25% discount in economy: usually LHR-(AMS/CDG)-SFO now requieres 21.500 miles. With the 25% you get to travel or 16.125 miles in August/September. If you were to start from AMS you would need 19.500 or from CDG 19.750 miles, with discount applied (usually 26.000 and 29.000 respectively).
        The problem is finding availability. It´s a nightmare. Even though there´s virtually availability on all flights, to find availability in the lowest mile fares is a challenge, coz you have to go day by day.
        Another consequence of the changes, which I think is positive, is that now you are able to “buy miles for 1 eurocent” up to 25% of the price in miles (not promo flights though).
        Overall, there are positive and negative sides to the FB changes. I wouldn´t say it´s all bad, there are some positive aspects to it.

  • Guesswho2000 says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:10

    Thanks Rob, T&Cs PDF’d accordingly! I hope they hold out a few more months, I’m waiting for my anniversary year to roll around before I hopefully trigger another (final, it seems) voucher.

  • Broadbent2000 says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:13

    Is anyone aware of an easy way to check your cards anniversary as it doesn’t appear online or in the app?

    • Guesswho2000 says:
      10 Jun10 June 08:23

      Call them apparently. Mine had 2 years 0% purchases, the expiry date of which is on the statement, but I’ll be calling them to check. It expires in a few days actually, so I’ll have to get cracking with the £7k spend!

    • Alex H says:
      10 Jun10 June 08:53

      Yes there is. I’ve just done it.
      If you go to the PDF statements on Lloyds website and look st the date your annual fee was charged then that’s your anniversary date.

    • Alan says:
      10 Jun10 June 09:59

      Just check back on your statement for annual fee date.

      • the_real_a says:
        10 Jun10 June 12:51

        Its actually the application acceptance date which is about 2 weeks before the fee is applied to the statement. Semantics of course, but might be useful to someone who needs the voucher to hit on a particular statement!

  • Mikeact says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:19

    Inevitable, but all the same,disappointing.

  • K says:
    10 Jun10 June 08:23

    Does anyone know what happens with the Lloyds upgrade vouchers once main Avios website closes and points migrate in August? Do they get migrated to BA or they’re lost?

    • Guesswho2000 says:
      10 Jun10 June 08:24

      Migrated, but I’d screenshot them now to be safe. Their expiry date is clear, so they can’t take them away (unless you redeem them, obviously).

    • Alan says:
      10 Jun10 June 10:00

      Avios.com FAQs cleared stated they’d migrate across to BA.com and new vouchers would appear there.

      • ADS says:
        10 Jun10 June 10:15

        i think it was said that you would have to phone up BA to use the upgrade voucher – it wouldn’t be possible to book online using it

        • Alan says:
          10 Jun10 June 23:56

          You’ve never been able to use them online except for direct flights to/from London anyway so those of us in the regions have always had to call!

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