Get £45 for free if you have a Monese bank account (only 4 minutes needed)

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

Monese is the online banking app which has a partnership with Avios – albeit that the partnership has not gone much further, so far, than letting you view your Avios balance alongside your financial balance.

I know that 2,000 HfP readers have a Monese account following our recent competition. If you didn’t win, here is £45 as compensation.

If you don’t already have a Monese account, you can use my refer-a-friend code of ROBE820. You will receive a £5 credit plus a further £15 when you’ve spent £500 on your card. I think that is how it works – it doesn’t actually tell me anywhere what you get ….

If you are reading this on your phone, the download link is here.

How to get your free £45

As a Black Friday offer, Monese has two offers running:

Buy a £50 shopping gift card for £35
Buy a £100 shopping gift card for £70

By far the easiest option is to buy an Amazon gift card and add it to your Amazon account for future use (it is valid for 10 years).

Here is a step by step guide to how to do it. This is based on the £100 gift card but the process is the same for the £50 card. You can buy one of each per Monese account.

As you can see from the time stamps on the screenshots, it only took me four minutes to buy and redeem each gift card – and it would have been quicker if I wasn’t taking and uploading screenshots!

If the offer comes up as ‘expired’, it isn’t. It is just overload on the system. I got ‘expired’ early on Friday but was then able to purchase successfully at lunchtime. If GIFT100 fails for the £100 gift card, you may find that GIFT50 still works, according to readers.

Step 1: Make sure you have £70 in your Monese account

I withdrew £70 from my linked HSBC account and it arrived instantly:

Step 2: Go to ‘Promotions’, which is under the menu in the top left corner (the ‘head’ icon)

Step 3: Add the code ‘GIFT100’ (or ‘GIFT50’ for the £50 card):

…. which will lead you to this screen:

Step 4: Click on your messages (the ‘bell’ in the top right corner)

You can then activate your gift card:

Step 5: Choose the gift card you want

You can choose from Amazon, Argos, Asda, Caffe Nero, Cineworld, Costa, Currys ….. and that is just A-C! For an easy life, take an Amazon gift card (valid for 10 years):

Step 6: Click here to go to the page of the amazon.co.uk where you redeem electronic gift cards

Enter your code:

And that’s it. £30 saved.

If you bought the £100 gift card, you can repeat the process with code GIFT50 and pay £35 for a £50 gift card.

I hope the free £45 makes up for not winning our Monese competition.

If you’re not already a Monese account holder, you can download the app here.

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

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

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

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

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

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

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

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Category

General

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

Boi says:

30 Nov30 November 06:41

OT: do I need a physical Monese card to top up at post office/pay point?
- Pablo says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 07:01
  
  Yes
Shoestring says:

30 Nov30 November 07:02

apparently the £50 code was working at 2am

Monese are aware of delays & problems on their site yesterday – so there’s a decent chance that this alone will make them decide to release a new tranche of £50 and £100 codes
- Eman says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 07:37
  
  Hasn’t been working since yesterday early afternoon!
  - Shoestring says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 07:38
    
    somebody reported elsewhere that it worked at 2am
Will says:

30 Nov30 November 07:06

Curve heading downhill and now Monese promotions after the deal expires Keep it clean Rob.
- Johnny5a says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 07:59
  
  Curve is still working fine, not sure of the issue.
  The offers were available yesterday, plus this offer went viral on HotUKDeals as well so it’s entirely possible the quota has all gone. As far as I know Rob (he’s said this in the past) queues each article up on autosend, I personally don’t think he’s at the computer at 5am posting these out.
  
  Anyway follow the facebook page, as this article was up yesterday
- Mr(s) Entitled says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 08:00
  
  Hardly Robs fault that Curve are a shambles. Buyer beware.
  - Peter K says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 08:51
    
    +1
    And, as posted above somewhere, it’s not like your money is trapped in Monese if you topped it up. You can transfer it back into your bank account at any time!
    - Shoestring says:
      
      30 Nov30 November 08:53
      
      hang on, that takes 2 taps of my time
      
      what a cheat
- Doug M says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 10:25
  
  Boohoo, I didn’t get it, it’s not fair, this site is rubbish. What a lot of whinging ice creams some of these people are.
martin Kay says:

30 Nov30 November 07:10

The codes were expired on publication of this email. Was this just a ruse to get a £5 referral?
- Chas says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 08:36
  
  I used the £50 code successfully 30+ mins after publication of this article, although the £100 code had been used by then. Rob can’t control how quickly something goes viral and may therefore run out.
  
  This is yet another example of where Rob has genuinely saved his readers money (in fact he’s given them cold hard cash in this instance unless you never spend anything at Amazon). Your comments are rude and just strike me as someone who is jealous that they didn’t action the advise in time.
  - Chas says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 08:45
    
    Sorry Martin Kay – my comment was in reply to Martin Davis further down the page…. 🤦🏻‍♂️
  - Eman says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 10:16
    
    Cold hard cash for himself through all the sign-ups
    - Shoestring says:
      
      30 Nov30 November 10:23
      
      hope so! HFP doesn’t run on air & I quite like getting all the tips & news
    - xcalx says:
      
      30 Nov30 November 10:50
      
      Which is great news. Keeps HFP free.
    - Rob says:
      
      30 Nov30 November 11:36
      
      Not getting rich on £5 a time (assuming you don’t spend the £500) 🙂 A reminder that our overheads exceed £100,000 pa (1 x f/t employee, 1 x p/t employee, 1 x p/t employee on 100% maternity pay, office, general costs) before I get a penny.
      - @mkcol says:
        
        30 Nov30 November 15:52
        
        Wow!
        Sadly reality will never shut the whiners up. They clearly think you have one of those magic money trees.
Eman says:

30 Nov30 November 07:30

Both expired since yesterday. Wasted a lot of time trying. Then found out that referrer gets £20 for each new sign up!! This is click bait!!
- Johnny5a says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 07:56
  
  So do you get £20 – £5 after first transaction and £15 after you’ve spent £500.
  
  Helps to read the article!
  - Peter K says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 08:53
    
    Yeah, so much vitriol when no wrong was done.
    - Johnny5a says:
      
      30 Nov30 November 09:06
      
      I bet during the good times and good articles – people don’t say Thank You! as soon as something popular goes wrong and doesn’t go their way – it’s like the world is ending
- Doug M says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 10:35
  
  You mean someone is running a website for gain, they’ve monetised the Internet? This is shocking, you must immediately report them to the appropriate authority.
Martin Davis says:

30 Nov30 November 07:42

Both expired. Unimpressive. Please don’t waste my time with dud promotions.
- The Streets says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 08:34
  
  How much of your time was really wasted? Think of the amount of wasted time you have just created for people who have to read this pointless comment
  - Chas says:
    
    30 Nov30 November 08:46
    
    +1 see my comment above (reply erroneously put against Martin Kay’s comment….)
- Doug M says:
  
  30 Nov30 November 10:40
  
  If I remember, you got £5 for signing up, and another £15 if spend £500. That’s way better than any deposit interest rate. Then, there’s every chance that these codes will work again at some point in the next day or two. The £100 didn’t work for me yesterday, then an hour later it did. I got £150 worth of useful gift cards for £105. Good luck to Rob if he made a few quid out of referrals.
Shoestring says:

30 Nov30 November 08:03

New sign ups – Pablo’s code – 1MONTHFREE gives you free Premium plan for 30 days, then automatically reverts to the Simple plan. This allows you to get the debit card for free (normally £4.95) which allows you to top up in store and use your Monese a/c more usefully – you also access a free virtual debit card for immediate online use.
Cls says:

30 Nov30 November 08:09

Avios millionaire winners already on Monese site from 26 November.