You do yes, it’ll be in fairly small writing underneath where they stick the card to the letter. Even with an existing card and my online account and app all set up I couldn’t see the limit on my new one until the card arrived.
Good news is they tend to send cards out quite quickly.
A baffling conclusion.
Why on earth should your weekly supermarket shop pay for your flights? Because your credit card company is overcharging the supermarket to process the card payment, and the credit card company has partnered up with British Airways? That’s mental. You’d never design a system like that. It’s all the worst aspects and practices in the financial world coming together to make ridiculous products to generate them (not you) money.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to earn these rewards, but they should never exist in the first place, and I certainly don’t want to see higher interchange fees to support these schemes. If they all die out, it’ll be for the best.
There are none in the US, and yet the equivalent Chase product has an even higher threshold for the voucher.
It’s disingenuous to compare the headline 5% for the most generous cards (which is typically limited to a certain amount spent and/or certain categories AIUI and/or for an introductory period only) with the ‘bog standard’ rates we get over here.
The market leader for a cashback % card over here is the “2%” Santander Edge credit card. The market for consumer credit is different over here, over there they’re used as loss leaders to entice customers over for paid for checking accounts - we didn’t have 5% cards before the cap came in, and it’s not realistic to expect they would suddenly happen if the cap went away.
The peak of the UK market, as long as I’ve been following it, has always been aroundabout where we are now; the rewards cards which have sunk in value are the sludgey everyman-and-his-dog ones; by which I mean fee-free cards with Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S, John Lewis, Asda, Barclaycard, Capital One etc branding.
I agree with much of the sentiment made by others, limits on interchange fees are a good thing. Higher ones would either stop small businesses taking cards, or they’ll simply increase prices to cover the extra fees they’re paying. It won’t automatically follow that we’ll get better credit card deals.
Just told my boyfriend about that as he has that card and he told me he is cancelling it!
I’ll be going to the free card as I’m now resigned to not getting a companion voucher. £15,000 a year is just too much for me personally. I have always made the £10,000 but only through really pushing a lot of things through my Amex that I can pay other ways, but an additional £5,000 is a step too far.
Payz do lounges.
Not true. First federal restrictions have just been implemented. More regulation coming. They have seen the consumer benefit created by capping interchange fees in the EU. The UK should align to the EU rules. Anything else would be madness.
I stand happily corrected 
Fear not, the date remains static even when you leave completely and later rejoin.
It also carries no benefits at all, but ‘going fallow’ for a couple of years certainly does (as things stand).
If you qualify for HSBC Premier, the combination of the bank account and credit card gets you the above for free.
Any fee-free accounts that allow complimentary lounge access please? Even if premier etc. Haven’t been able to find any, unsurprisingly I suppose. Though HSBC for £24 seems to be a good shout, it doesn’t cover lounges in 3 of the places I often visit.
You’d need to work out if paying for a card to get ‘free’ lounge access was worth it.
HSBC Premier have two credit cards. A free one which has the £24 fee for lounges and one with an annual fee where lounge access is included within that.
However, if the locations you want to visit don’t have Priority Pass lounges then I don’t think you are going to have much choice.
DragonPass is the only other scheme I know and they are only used by a few institutions.
Payz lets you into Diners lounges for £21 (the Priority Pass ones).
Most status allows guest. So pick an airline and get gold or platinum status with them.
I hope you realise how that’s not quite so easy.
That being said.
Silver with BA is a sweet spot that currently is one of the easiest ones to get and gives you lounge access with OneWorld airlines globally. Especially if you take advantage of double tier miles with BA Holidays at the moment.
My gold card retention offer is a measly 5k points for £1k spend within 3 months. Safe to say I’ll be cancelling it in any case. Not seeing the value of the gold card.
HSBC’s was only up until recently using the LoungeKey scheme which my US version of the card still uses - I didn’t have a bad experience with LoungeKey.
Yes, Lounge key is run by the same company as Priority Pass