Avios invests in online banking app Monese – what is its plan?

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On Monday I published a mini-rant about the bloated state of the UK credit card industry. As part of that, I asked why investors were pouring vast sums into online current account start-ups (Monzo, Revolut, Starling etc) when such products have never made money even for legacy banks.

On the other hand, few start-ups are pushing into UK credit cards which have historically been hugely profitable.

A reader pointed out to me that Avios Group recently invested in Monese as part of a $60m funding round – see here.

If you’ve never heard of Monese, it is like Revolut, Starling or Monzo but aimed at people who are new to a country and would otherwise struggle to meet the checks required to open a traditional bank account.

You can open a Monese account in various European countries, including the UK, simply by uploading a scan of your passport. Monese is, of course, also happy to open an account for you if you are living and working in your home country. If you are reading this on a tablet or mobile, you can click here to download the Monese app and have your account open within minutes.

I am assuming that Avios has a plan for Monese – we need to see what develops over the next few months.

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

British Airways and Avios

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

Kayleigh says:

13 Dec13 December 15:17

OT. I’m trying to get 25,000 avios from my husbands BAEC account into mine. I don’t really want to set up a household account as I have some Iberia points that I need to transfer in in Jan which I understand is difficult with a household account, even more so now the Avios website is no more.
He has had a look online and it looks like it’s going to cost £175 to do this! I’m sure I’ve read that you can do this for free to your spouse but can find this info now. Any tips on how we can do this for free?
Any advice greatly appreciated!
- Anna says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 15:52
  
  What and when do you want the avios for? There might be a couple of ways around this but it depends on when you need to do it all!
  - Kayleigh says:
    
    13 Dec13 December 16:27
    
    Hi Anna,
    I’m looking to book outbound NCL to HKG this weekend when flights are released, but I have enough points in my account to do this. The return trip (open jaw) in early Jan 2020 I would look to book as soon as the reward flight availability became available (BKK-NCL) as business looks hard to come by on this route! So this would in about a months time.
    Many thanks 🙂
    - Anna says:
      
      13 Dec13 December 19:01
      
      If you don’t want to use Shoestring’s method, could you transfer the Iberia points in early then create a HHA afterwards to be able to use your husband’s avios?
      
      Though if you only need 25,000 to get a return CW trip to the Far East, it might even be worth buying them with the current BA offer which expires on Sunday. It would be an even better deal if you were working towards a sign up bonus or 2 4 1/upgrade voucher!
- Shoestring says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 16:24
  
  The avios.com website is going strong, so the old transfer method IB—>avios.com—BAEC HHA still works fine. It’s just called Aerclub https://www.aerlingus.com/aerclub/ but still on avios.com platform
  
  So you could set up BAEC HHA with no worries about getting hold of the IB points later.
  - Kayleigh says:
    
    16 Dec16 December 12:54
    
    Thanks Shoestring. I’ll give it a go!
    Bought the first leg this morning NCL – HKG. Was hoping for Business but they had First availability. With a bit of a reshuffle of all our points programmes, a little time to earn the final ones we need for our return leg, and £79 for 6000 avios on the BA offer I think it’s well worth the upgrade.
    This will be the first time we have travelled in anything but economy so cannot wait to try it out.
Voltron says:

13 Dec13 December 15:24

OT – Anybody else getting fed up of chasing nectar for missing bonus points. I’ve had numerous offers not redeeming and need to use chat to get them, starting to make me wonder to just drop using the nectar app and only buying things when I need to and not go out of my way for these offers.
Applied for the life insurance bonus 14,000 nectar points and such a hassle to claim. Time is better spent elsewhere.
- Robman says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 15:53
  
  O/T
  I have an Iberia flight booked by redeeming points earned from the recent Iberia 90k points promotion. Can anyone tell me, if I can no longer take these flights, am I able to change the flight dates rather than cancel and potentially lose the points?
  - Rob says:
    
    13 Dec13 December 16:21
    
    Changing dates shouldn’t be an issue as you keep the same booking reference which means no cancellation / rebook takes place.
- Crafty says:
  
  17 Dec17 December 09:20
  
  I find claiming Nectar bonuses very easy through the online chat, but agree it is a pain having to track everything oneself.
Tony says:

13 Dec13 December 18:16

O/T Has anyone been unfortunate enough to end up in the “Yotel” lounge in Charles De Gaulle T2E?
As a one off, I’m travelling Flybe into Manchester so having to use the back up Priority Pass (normally travel BA with Silver card)

It’s officially the worst lounge I’ve visited. That bad it’s almost funny… €10 credit to spend on crisps and chocolate. No alcohol. The only PP option at Terminal 2E!!
- Shoestring says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 18:34
  
  There’s meant to be beer & wine (for purchase) – but yeah, it reviews extremely badly & definitely not worth using up a ‘paid’ PP lounge entry, probably better than nothing if you have unlimited PP lounge entries
  https://www.prioritypass.com/en/Lounges/Europe/France/Paris/Paris-CDG/CDG8-Yotelair-Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle?utm_source=ezine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cdg&utm_term=ldnjul17
  - Tony says:
    
    13 Dec13 December 19:08
    
    My priority pass is via Amex platinum so thankfully hasn’t cost me a visit!
    - Sigmund Freud says:
      
      14 Dec14 December 02:55
      
      It’s funny how people think the additional benefits are ‘free’.
      
      #psychology
VJ says:

13 Dec13 December 18:30

O/T – Oyster Topup (Considering a lot of you are doing this right now) – When does the topup applied at the shop appears on the card; It’s immediate or you have to make a journey.
- JPa says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 18:51
  
  Immediate (but I did make a journey straight after).
- Genghis says:
  
  14 Dec14 December 06:22
  
  Yep. Immediate.
  My advice: don’t over do it.
Shoestring says:

13 Dec13 December 19:23

O/T check your BAEC points a/c? The compo Avios from the US class action on BA fuel surcharges are dropping into people’s a/cs. What seems odd – but good – is that people are getting the compo Avios even when they didn’t join the class action, it seems that you’re in unless you opt out! Provided you flew under the circumstances outlined in the class action, you should be in line to get the compo.
- Anna says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 20:45
  
  I didn’t join but have received 12,598 today which I can’t think of any other explanation for! Seems a strange number though.
  - Shoestring says:
    
    13 Dec13 December 20:49
    
    Common compo multiples reported on FT seem to be 20,000, 12,500, 35,000.
    - Shoestring says:
      
      13 Dec13 December 21:04
      
      Anna did you drill down to see the longer explanation of where those points came from?
    - Anna says:
      
      14 Dec14 December 06:26
      
      All it says is “Avios – Collected from Avios programme activity”, which is why I thought it was something to do with the Lloyds card. I transferred all my avios out of avios.com before my account closed.
      
      Can anyone remember the date by which the bonus Tesco avios were supposed to appear?!
Shoestring says:

13 Dec13 December 19:30

My 384 bonus Avios for the Tesco 20% promo have dropped into the a/c. I wasn’t targeted for anything larger than the minimum transfer, unfortunately – but as I said at the time, this one was open to everybody.
- Anna says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 20:44
  
  My 1000 extra avios for converting Clubcard vouchers haven’t landed yet.
  - Sarah says:
    
    13 Dec13 December 22:27
    
    I’ve not got 1000 bonus from Tesco for concerting to Avios either. Does anyone else have them and how long does it take?
    - Shoestring says:
      
      13 Dec13 December 22:40
      
      Bugger. Sounds like I could have got 20% on everything I converted.
      
      You’re right – it was meant to be 1000, not 384.
  - FlyUpTop says:
    
    14 Dec14 December 07:05
    
    Same here.
Boi says:

13 Dec13 December 20:56

OT: any good wine deals/offer stack for wine out there. It’s that time of year where I have to get wine for friends (I don’t drink).
- Sarah says:
  
  13 Dec13 December 22:35
  
  Don’t know if this is the best offer out there but I got 14 bottles of wine, 2 glasses and 1000 Avios (posted a few days after delivery) via BA code in a magazine for £54.99. If anyone still has the code maybe they can post as I’ve thrown in the bin or try googling it. Just remember to cancel subscription!
Peter Taysum says:

13 Dec13 December 23:49

OTT: Question.

Have Hilton Grand Vacances (timeshare). Transferred out “bonus points” to go to the Conrad Rangali (obviously). Will these expire? The HH points (my co-owner in timeshare) account has points added recently.

Help!

Thanks
- FlyUpTop says:
  
  14 Dec14 December 07:09
  
  Hope your not a “Tesco Tourist” thinking of going to Rangali, you won’t be able to mix with the well healed that go there and you will obviously be astounded by paying for your dinner at a 5 STAR Resort as some other poster put on here other day? Geez, some people….what a KH!