Pay £144, get 43,000 Avios and £600: Barclays Avios Rewards explained

Did you know you can get Avios every month just for having a bank account?

You don’t have to spend anything or remember to use a particular card. You pay a monthly fee, and by default you’ll get more Avios back than the fee is worth!

It’s called Barclays Avios Rewards, an add-on you can switch on if you have a Barclays Premier current account. And there’s a good offer on right now. Barclays is paying new customers up to £600 to switch their current account to Premier, plus a 25,000 Avios joining bonus for signing up to Avios Rewards.

The catch: you need to earn £75,000 a year, or have £100,000 in savings to get a Premier account, which we appreciate is a lot. If you don't clear that bar, we still think this is worth knowing about.

How a bank account pays you Avios

Avios Rewards isn't a bank account in its own right. It's an add-on to Barclays Premier, the version of Barclays' current account for higher earners. Premier is free, and once you have it, you can switch on Avios Rewards in the Barclays app for £12 a month. For that you get:

• At least 1,500 Avios every month, with no spending required

• An anniversary reward every year: 7,000 Avios or a Barclays cabin upgrade voucher

• A joining bonus - currently 25,000 Avios

• Discounted airport lounge passes through DragonPass

1,500 Avios a month comes to 18,000 a year. At 1p per Avios, the base value we use for a redemption, that's £180 of Avios for £144 in fees. That alone justifies the subscription, but then you've got the anniversary reward on top of that.

After 12 months of holding the account, you will get the choice of either 7,000 Avios or a Barclays cabin upgrade voucher. These are similar to Companion Vouchers, but whereas a Companion Voucher halves the cost of the Avios needed for two people return, the cabin upgrade voucher allows you to upgrade at the point of booking with Avios for either one person return, or two people one-way. A little bit confused? Don't worry, here's our full guide.

The cabin upgrade voucher allows you to easily save more than 7,000 Avios on a booking, so I would always pick this option. Our Avios Calculator allows you to select a cabin upgrade voucher, so you can see how many Avios you'd save.

Where the £600 comes from

The cash is for switching your current account to Premier, and it's paid in two parts:

1. Open a Premier Current Account in the Barclays app.

2. Within 30 days, complete a full switch using the Current Account Switch Service, moving at least three active direct debits, and pay in a salary of at least £5,000.

3. That gets you £450.

4. Keep using the account for five more months, with at least 10 debit card payments a month, and you get another £150.

A full switch moves your direct debits, standing orders and salary across to Barclays and closes your old account. You also need to be new to Barclays. If you held any Barclays current account on or before 1 October 2026, or you've had a Barclays switch reward before, you won't qualify. Joint accounts don't count either.

And the 25,000 Avios

The 25,000 Avios are a separate bonus. You get them for switching on Avios Rewards, not for opening the Premier account.

If Premier is your first ever Barclays current account, you'll get the 25,000 Avios as long as you complete your full switch within three months of joining Avios Rewards.

The good news is that the same full switch counts towards both the £600 and the 25,000 Avios. What I'd do is:

1. Open your Premier account.

2. Switch on Avios Rewards in the Barclays app straight away (tap Products, then Collect Avios).

3. Then start your full switch.

Already a Barclays Premier customer? You'll still get a joining bonus once you've held the account for four months, but it's 2,500 Avios rather than 25,000.

Just one more thing to bear in mind: switching on Avios Rewards means opting out of Barclays Blue Rewards and going paperless on everything you hold with Barclays.

You need to earn £75,000 to get in

To qualify for a Barclays Premier account you need to pay in a gross annual income of £75,000, or keep £100,000 with Barclays in savings, eligible investments or a mix of the two.

The £5,000 salary mentioned in the offer for the switch cash, is only a condition for that offer. It doesn't replace the general Premier criteria. (quick side note: a £5,000 monthly salary paid into this account would equate to around £85,000, which is a higher than what is stated, and that's before we factor in things like student loan payments .... would anyone from Barclays care to comment?)

A first year, if you do everything

• £600 in cash, paid over about six months

• 25,000 Avios joining bonus

• 18,000 Avios from the monthly 1,500

• At your first anniversary, 7,000 Avios or a cabin upgrade voucher

That's for £144 in fees. Not bad.

The lounge membership is a discount, not free access

Barclays calls this Airport Lounge Membership, which makes it sound like you'll be getting into lounges for free, but you won't. It's DragonPass Premier+, which lets you buy lounge passes at a discount, currently £24 per person per visit.

You'll only get free visits if you also hold the Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card. That card costs £20 a month, with Barclays giving you £5 a month back if you also have Avios Rewards switched on. If you have both Barclays Avios Rewards and a Barclaycard Avios Plus credit card, you will get four free lounge visits a year.

Is Barclays going after HSBC?

This is only my guess. HSBC has been offering £500 for switching to its own Premier account, which in turn allows you to get the HSBC Premier World Elite card, which at the time of writing has a boosted sign-up bonus of 70,000 points (worth 35,000 Avios).

Barclays launched its offer on 1 October, so I'd be surprised if that was a coincidence.

Should you do it?

If you qualify for Premier and you've never banked with Barclays, I'd take it. Even after the fees, you're well ahead in the first year. After that, you can decide whether 18,000 Avios and an anniversary reward are worth £144 a year to you. If I were you, then they'd be worth it.

Barclays hasn't given an end date and says it can withdraw the offer at any time. £600 and 25,000 Avios for moving your salary from one bank to another is the best this has been, so I sit on your hands for too long.

You can read more and apply for Barclays Avios Rewards here.

Sam

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