Collected thoughts on card design

Depends on what you’re looking for.
The BA credit card (in my opinion) is a good looking card which earns Avios
The Preferred Rewards Gold card offers more versatile points, but has a more dated look to it, and an annual fee.
The Platinum card offers a lot, but at a hefty price. But it does look good
Then there are are the assortment of cashback cards, with varying degrees of generosity. Some look ok, and some look downright dreary.

I have the BA card and the platinum cashback one. Love the look of the BA one.

Need to add a non amex card for those times it’s not accepted. Just whenever I go and look around most seem fairly bad with legacy banks.

Nationwide’s credit card has 0% foreign currency conversion if you’d need that (and are a Nationwide member), personally I like how the card looks. NatWest and RBS have 0% foreign currency fees too but the designs are meh. To be honest my favourite design of all the credit cards I have (and I have quite a few) is my first direct gold card. Otherwise, probably the Halifax Clarity card (also 0% foreign currency fees) because it’s blue :joy:

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Apologies, I read your post wrong.
There is the Barclaycard Avios credit card which offers a reasonable earning rate, and I think 0% FX fees.

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I saw the first direct gold card on here a while ago. I think I might look at applying for that.

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Barclaycard avios - summary of fees says “Non-sterling purchase fee: 2.99% of purchase (no minimum)”

There is British Airways Prepaid MasterCard (no idea who provides it) which has 1.5% FX fee, or “fee free currency wallet” as in if one pre converts it is fee free? But at what exchange rate? I think regular Barclays current accounts have a currency wallet too - but it only allows converting money using Barclays rates (no ability to transfer euro in from wise/starling/revolut).

It seems to me there are no cards that give avios and have fx-fee free option.

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Thanks for clarifying

The only thing gold on that card are the numbers. Years ago their gold card was actually gold.

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I don’t understand why amex card designs are different in every country. With widely different offerings, pricing and features.

One would think they could optimize things. But I guess US gets shiny designs and UK gets outdated plastic designs, probably out of US rejects pile.

The devil himself, that’s who provides it. Stay as far away from it as possible. Terrible app experience, shoddy support and a monthly fee (after 6 months, at least at the time I tried). The worst card I ever used, and that’s no exaggeration.

Despite my issues with it abroad I’d say the Barclaycard Rewards card is a sufficiently decent one. 0% fix fee and 0.25% cashback both at home and abroad.

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If you enjoy being kicked in the balls at any opportunity go for it.

Yes I landed on Barclaycard last night but cant decide to stack the ba amex with Barclaycard Avios or go for the rewards card like you said. hmmm

That was my plan, but unfortunately got rejected for the Barclaycard :sob:

funny, I did the eligibility checker and said they could not give me pre-approval but I could still apply. Think I’m going to leave it a month or two.

I noticed that there is the avios rewards program with Barclays now for £12 a month and think it looks like a fairly good deal. Might move an account to Barclays premier to get on that program.

That’s only if you meet their premier banking criteria AFAIK

The problem with “offerings, pricing, and features” is a somewhat different one than the problem with card designs. With the first, different features and rewards programs cost different things to provide in each country (except maybe in the EU due to single market), and each country (and EU single market) have different rules regarding interchange fees, interest, and such. Thus, what AmEx can provide in the US isn’t necessarily financially viable in another country.

With card designs, the delay is mainly in that the design needs to be copyrighted, and market-tested to make sure it appeals to locals in the county it’ll be released in. And, of course, co-brands are different in each country so those need to be done from scratch for each country with a few exceptions (Marriott is common to US/Canada/UK/Japan, for instance).

Love this design. Probably have the choice of the rainbow logo or whatever app flag you wanted. Also going back to the dark blue card would be great too as I don’t like the hot coral colour.

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I do wonder why Monzo hasnt gone vertical yet. Almost all UK have gone vertical and it’s at that point for me now where horizontal cards look a bit “old-fashioned”

I really like the Barclaycard designs. I wonder when Barclays will update their current accounts to the vertical design.

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Following on from the vertical card comments, I wonder why we are still getting embossed cards from some issuers.
Just my personal taste, but non embossed cards look so much better.

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