Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard® 50K Bonus Ending Soon

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard® has had a 50,000 mile sign-up bonus for some time but it might be dropping to 40,000 soon so you might want to consider applying now. I constantly put this credit card in my Top 10 Travel Credit Cards because it offers over $500 worth of travel which is very competitive. It’a a great way to cover random travel expenses or high surcharges on awards tickets but you need to be a little familiar with the card before you go for it.

Update: Some offers are no longer available — click here for the latest deals!

How do the “miles” work?

Unlike Chase, Citi, and Amex cards, where you earn points that are transferred to frequent flyer or hotel rewards programs, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ works a lot differently. For this card, you earn miles through spending at a rate of 2 miles/per dollar spent. So if you spend $3,000 you earn 6,000 “miles.”

These miles can then be redeemed at one cent per mile but only after you make a qualifying travel purchase. They can also be redeemed for a general statement credit but the value drops down (by 50%) to .5 cent per point which is not a very good redemption rate at all. Thus, I’d definitely stick to travel redemptions for this card.

Redeeming your miles for travel credits is pretty straight forward. You charge your travel expense to your card and then you have 120 days to log into your online Barclaycard account and select the transaction which you would like to credit your miles toward. Once you redeem your miles, you get a 5% rebate and can apply that to another purchase.

The only drawback to this card is that the redemption minimum for miles is 10,000, meaning that the smallest purchase that you can redeem miles for is a $100 transaction. This makes it a lot harder to use this card for travel purchases like taxis and busses.

What constitutes “travel” for the Arrival Plus?

Just like some other cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Citi Thankyou Premier, the travel category for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ is quite broad.

Here are the terms taken straight from Barclays:

Merchants in the travel category include airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, campgrounds, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, trains, buses, taxis, limousines, and ferries.

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ used to also include tourist attractions but it seems that vague category proved to be problematic and Barclaycard removed it. Even without tourist attractions, there’s still a pretty broad amount of expenses that could fall into the travel category, however.

Sign-up bonus

  • The current sign-up bonus is for 50,000 miles for spending $3,000 within 3 months but as mentioned it will likely be dropping to 40,000 miles soon.

That means that once you hit the minimum spend you’ll have earned 56,000 miles, the equivalent of $460 worth of statement credit that can be applied against your travel purchases. If you’re a traveling couple and the two of you get the card, it’s an easy way to get close to $1,000 worth of travel purchases covered pretty quickly.

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Bonus earning potential

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ doesn’t earn extra points for certain categories but it does earn 2X miles on every single purchase. That’s not a bad deal, especially if you can end up spending a lot on this card. (And actually, the bonus earning on this card could be argued to be 2.11X since you get an automatic 5% rebate on your redemption.)

Because there are no bonus categories, this is a great card to use for purchases that don’t fall within the bonus categories of your other cards and would otherwise earn 1X.

Also, don’t forget about the Barclaycard RewardsBoost. This is a web portal where you can log-in and make purchases with your Barclaycard and earn additional miles on items from a host of different retailers. There’s also the Barclaycard Travel Community, which allows you to earn miles by sharing notes and photos about your travels.

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Barclays usually pulls Transunion

One great thing about Barclays is that they almost always pull Transunion for their credit cards. If you pursue Chase, Citi, and Amex cards, you’ll likely get hit pretty hard with hard pulls on your Experian and Equifax credit reports.

Thus, applying for this card can give some of your credit reports a bit of a break when it comes to applying for Chase, Citi, and Amex cards. Moreover, if you’ve got a lot of hardpulls from the aforementioned banks then Barclaycard can always be a good option to go to while you wait for time to distance you from some of your hard pulls.

Note: Barclaycard may sometimes pull from additional bureaus, so YMMV.

Benefits

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Baggage delay insurance
  • Free FICO score
  • 0% APR for 12 months on balance transfers made within 45 days of opening the account. (Transfer fee is either $5 or 3% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater.)

Annual Fee

  • $89, waived the first year

The $89 annual fee is not bad at all since it is waived the first year. However, what really makes it great is that you can downgrade or product change this card to a no annual fee card.

Final word

The Arrival Plus is a solid card but it’s worth getting at its current 50,000 sign-up bonus. Otherwise, if you wait until it drops back down to 40,000 points, you might be better off with the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card which has lower redemption minimums.

Should You Downgrade or Product Change the Barclaycard Arrival Plus?

NOTE: This article contains expired credit card offers. 

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus is now offering a 50,000 miles bonus for spending $3,000 within the first 90 days of card opening. This totals to about $560 worth of travel credit once the minimum spend is meant. I personally love the Barclaycard Arrival Plus for covering things like fuel surcharges, hotels, and other random expenses. If you’re not familiar with the card, read my review here.This article will focus on whether or not you should downgrade or product change the Barclaycard Arrival Plus and give you some tips for doing so.

Options

If you just want to avoid the annual fee on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus (that’s waived the first year) then an easy solution is to downgrade the card to the standard Arrival card. However, if you have plans of getting another Barclaycard Arrival Plus or if you have a small amount of miles left over from your rebate on your Arrival Plus, then you might want to consider a product change to the standard Barclaycard Rewards Master Card.

The Barclaycard Rewards Master Card is a standard cash back card that comes with no annual fee. It offers 2X points on gas, utility & grocery store purchases (excluding Target and Walmart) and 1X on all other purchases. There are better options for a straight cash back card, such as the Citi Double Cash offering 2% back on all purchases, but there are two reasons why you’d want to product change to the Barclaycard Rewards Master Card.

Converting unusable miles from the Arrival Plus 

Let’s say you had the Arrival Plus when it had its 40,000 points bonus and you redeemed 46,000 miles for travel. With the 5% rebate you were left with about 2,300 points. Since it takes at least 10,000 points to redeem on the Arrival Plus Card, you probably have about $23 worth of points just sitting in your account going to waste. 

If you product change to the Barclaycard Rewards Master Card your points should be converted over into the new rewards currency for the Barclaycard Rewards Master Card. This means that you’ll be able to redeem amounts starting as low as 1,000 points (or $10). So you can finally put those points to use! 

In addition, when you product change, the reps often have promos that they will offer your. Sometimes they might give you X amount of points after your first purchase, or X amount of statement credit after spending a certain amount, and they even thrown in additional promos like 0% APRs when you change. Finally, it’s also a way to get a credit limit increase without incurring a hard pull (you should always confirm no hard pull of course). So by product changing to the Rewards Master Card, you can squeeze out more value and potentially help decrease your utilization if that’s an issue for you. 

Getting another Arrival Plus 

Another reason why you might want to product change the card is that you want to sign up for a second Arrival Plus card. If you simply downgrade an Arrival Plus to an Arrival card you will not be able to get a sign-up bonus for the Arrival Plus, you need to completely change the product to a card with a different rewards system like the Rewards Master Card in order to be eligible to receive another bonus. 

How long to wait to product change the Arrival Plus? 

Generally, you probably want to wait about 6 to 12 months until you product change your Arrival Plus. Once you’re ready to initiate the change, simply call in to the number on the back of your card and tell them that you want to product change the card. Sometimes reps will deny you the ability to product change even though you’ve waited over 6 months. If that happens, then hang up and try to get a hold of someone else; they should be able to process the change even if you’ve had your card for less than one year. I’m not sure if there’s a strict minimum time limit for product changing but 6 months does seem to be a reasonable time frame. 

How long to wait to get another Arrival Plus? 

This is a tricky question. After you product change or cancel your Arrival Plus, it’s not clear exactly how long you need to wait. I would try to wait 6 months. However, others have had luck with merely waiting as short as 6 weeks. Always remember that just because you can get approved for the card, that doesn’t mean that you’ll receive the bonus. If it were me, I’d wait 6 months and during that time I’d also try to put some spend on my Barclaycard as well since that seems to help with approval odds. However, if you had travel plans coming up and you really wanted to use your card to cover them, I don’t think it’s that risky of a gamble to apply for a 2nd card in a little as 6 weeks based on current data points. You’ve at least got a shot at it.  

Final Word 

For just getting around the annual fee of the Arrival Plus a downgrade to the Arrival is a good option. However, if you want to possibly cash-in on a smaller balance of left over miles and/or apply for another Barclaycard while continuing to age your credit history, then initiating a product change to the Barclaycard Rewards Master Card is the better option. 

Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card vs the Barclaycard Arrival Plus

Two of the top “statement credit” travel cards are the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and the Barclaycard Arrival Plus. These cards are very similar and offer many of the same benefits, such as identical sign-up bonuses. There are some key differences between the cards, however, and some of those differences may make you prefer one card over the other. Here’s a comparison of the Capital One Venture Card vs the Barclaycard Arrival Plus.

Update: Some offers are no longer available — click here for the latest deals!

How these card work

Both of these cards earn “miles” that come in the form of redeemable points worth 1 cent per point. So, for example, if you earn 40,000 miles with a sign-up bonus, that equates to $400 worth of redeemable points. You then use your earned miles to redeem statement credits after you make qualifying travel purchases, effectively canceling out your travel purchase. It’s one of the easiest ways to earn and redeem points and the simplicity of these type of rewards credit cards, attracts a lot of consumers.

Sign-up bonus

Both cards have offered the same sign-up bonus for 40,000 miles for spending $3,000 within 3 months. However, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus recently upped its bonus to 50,000 miles! 

Bonus earning potential 

Both cards earn 2X on all purchases when those miles are redeemed towards travel. 

While they both earn “double the miles” remember that they are not true 2X cards, since you only get that much value when you redeem your miles toward travel expenses. Other cards like the Citi Double Cash give you 2X on everything and don’t limit your redemptions to travel (more on that card below).  

Additional Earnings

The Barclaycard has the Barclaycard RewardsBoost. This is a web portal where you can log-in and make purchases with your Barclaycard and earn additional miles on items from a host of different retailers. There’s also the Barclaycard Travel Community, which allows you to earn miles by sharing notes and photos about your travels. You can learn more about these earning opportunities here.

Capitol One does not currently offer a shopping portal so there’s no way (aside from promotions) to earn additional miles with shopping. 

How is travel defined?

Here are the terms taken straight from Capital One’s website: 

Purchases made from airlines, hotels, rail lines, car rental agencies, limousine services, bus lines, cruise lines, taxi cabs, travel agents and time shares are generally considered to be travel purchases and availability for redemption is based on the merchant category code assigned to them by the merchant.

Here are the terms taken straight from the Barclaycard:

Merchants in the travel category include airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, campgrounds, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, trains, buses, taxis, limousines, and ferries.

Barclay’s definition of travel appears to be a little bit more expansive because it lists more examples, but I’m not sure that it actually is. Whether or not something qualifies as “travel” usually just comes down to how the merchant codes the purchase and I’d be surprised if there was a major difference between the cards. In any event, you can rest assured that the major and most common travel purchases (airlines, hotels, trains, etc.) will likely be covered by both cards. Thus, I don’t think there’s a clear winner here.

Rules on redeeming

Both cards differ pretty significantly when it comes to the rules for redeeming.

Time frame

Capital One

  • You have to redeem your statement credit within 90 days from the date of purchase. (You may not be aware but you can actually call and request an extension for up to 6 months on this time restriction.)

Barclaycard

  • You have to redeem your statement credit within 120 days from the date of purchase. Unfortnately, there is no option for getting an extension but 4 months should be plenty of time for you to redeem your miles. 

Minimum redemption amount

Capital One

  • There is no minimum requirement for redemptions.
  • For partial redemptions, the minimum requirement is $25 (or 2,500 points).

Barclaycard

  • $100 minimum for all redemptions. 

This is where the Venture card wins huge.

There are so many miscellaneous travel purchases like taxi rides that fall under $100 that Barclaycard has made it terribly inconvenient to use its card with its $100 minimum. However, with no minimum redemption requirement, the Venture is a perfect card to cover these expenses.

Redemption rebate

Capital One

  • No rebate 

Barclaycard

  • 5% rebate

When you redeem your points with the Barclaycard Arrival Plus, you automatically get 5% of your points put back into your account. So if you were to redeem all 46,000 of your points earned from your sign-up bonus with your first redemption, you’d get 2,300 points put back into your account for $23 worth of travel.

That rebate (which used to be 10%) is decent but keep in mind you’ve still got to spend $3,850 on your card to meet the 10,000 points threshold to redeem your miles for a purchase. And that’s $3,850 worth of spend that could’ve gone on another card to likely earn a much more valuable amount of travel.

For that reason, I personally don’t put too much value in the 5% rebate benefit.

Annual Fee

Capital One

  • $59, waived the first year

Barclaycard

  • $89, waived the first year

Some people cite to the additional $23 gained from the 5% rebate on the Arrival Plus as a reason for why these annual fees are roughly equal. As already stated, I don’t value the 5% rebate because of the need to spend so much extra on the card. But more than that, both of these cards are “earn and burn” in my book, meaning that I would downgrade them after the first year in order to avoid the annual fee.

If you’re thinking about keeping either of these cards for the long term and paying the annual fee, I’d recommend you to reconsider your decision.

For most people, I’d venture (no pun intended) to guess that you’d be better served with a no annual fee cash back card like the Citi Double Cash if you’re wanting to just earn straight 2X back on spending. While the Barclaycard Arrival Plus offers a higher effective earning rate of 2.11 (with the 5% rebate factored in), you’d still have to spend $87,000 in order to offset the annual fee that you don’t have to pay with the Citi Double Cash ($87,000 x 2 = 174,000 miles and 174,000 x .05 =  8,700 miles or $87). 

And for many others, cards like the Amex EveryDay and Chase Freedom cards (when paired with the Sapphire Preferred or the Ink Plus) will provide superior value in travel redemptions with so much spend put on them, especially if you’re interested in redeeming for premium airfare. $87,000 worth of spend on the Chase Trifecta, could go a long way and net you thousands of dollars more in travel value. 

Therefore, the only way that I’d even think about using the Arrival Plus in the long-term is if I earned over 174,000 Barclay miles a year and was very adverse to rewards programs that require points to be transferred to travel partners.  

Credit bureaus pulled

One great thing about the Arrival Plus is that Barclaycard will often pull Transunion (although sometimes they will pull from an additional bureau as well). Transunion is the bureau that seems to get pulled the least from the major banks, so applying for the Arrival Plus is a great way to give your credit report a rest.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Capital One will often pull from all three bureaus! The good news is that you can freeze one of your credit reports like Experian (and still get approved). It will cost you about $22 total, but if you’re really trying to preserve your credit inquiries it might be worth it to you. 

Redeeming for non-travel items

Capital One 

You can redeem your miles for cash in the form of a check or account credit, gift cards and more. The redemption rate remains at 1 cent per point for gift cards and charitable redemptions but if you’re trying to redeem for a check or statement credit, it drops down to .5 cents per point (not worth it in my opinion).

Barclaycard

You can also redeem your miles for statement credits and gift cards but for these redemptions you’ll be redeeming at .5 cent per point, making the Capital One Venture a bit more versatile and valuable. 

Other benefits 

Although one card is a Visa Signature and the other one is a Mastercard World Elite, both cards have the standard benefits you’d expect from travel rewards credit cards, including: 

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Purchase protection
  • Lost luggage reimbursement
  • Auto rental insurance
  • Fraud coverage

One benefit of the Arrival Plus is that it offers EMV chip technology, making it a great card to bring around in places like Europe where it’s often necessary to have a “true” chip and pin to go through with a purchase.

Final Word

Overall, these cards are very closely matched, but I’d give the edge to the Capital One Venture since it has no minimum for redemptions and is thus more practical to use to cover the array of travel expenses you might incur. However, in the end, I view both cards as “earn and burn” options and not as options for long-term use, so it’s really all about utilizing the sign-up bonuses for me. 

Review of The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®

[Offers contained within this article may no longer be available]

A lot of people focus on Chase, Citi, and Amex cards because they have such great airline and hotel transfer partners. But there are several other travel credit cards which are great to use that don’t utilize transfer partners for their benefits and instead provide cardholders with statement credits. The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ is one of those cards. Here’s a review of some of the perks of this card and why you might want to make room for it in your wallet.

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How do the “miles” work?

Unlike Chase, Citi, and Amex cards, where you earn points that are transferred to frequent flyer or hotel rewards programs, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ works a lot differently. For this card, you earn miles through spending at a rate of 2 miles/per dollar spent. So if you spend $3,000 you earn 6,000 “miles.”

These miles can then be redeemed at one cent per mile after you make a qualifying travel purchase. They can also be redeemed for a general statement credit but the value drops down (by 50%) to .5 cent per point which is not a very good redemption rate at all. Thus, I’d definitely stick to travel redemptions for this card.

Redeeming your miles for travel credits is pretty straight forward. You charge your travel expense to your card and then you have 120 days to log into your online Barclaycard account and select the transaction which you would like to credit your miles toward. Once you redeem your miles, you get the 5% rebate and can apply that to another purchase.

You can read more about the process here.  That article is helpful in seeing how easy it is to redeem miles but you should note that two important changes have gone in effect since the publishing of that article.

One, the mile redemption rebate has changed from 10% to 5%, meaning that you’re only earning 2.11 miles as opposed to 2.22 miles. Second, the redemption minimum for miles has increased from 2,500 to 10,000, meaning that the smallest purchase that you can redeem miles for is a $100 transaction. The latter change is really a bummer as it excludes a lot of expenses travelers constantly incur from taxis, busses, etc.

What constitutes “travel” for the Arrival Plus?

Just like some other cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or the Citi Thankyou Premier, the travel category for the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ is quite broad.

Here are the terms taken straight from Barclays:

Merchants in the travel category include airlines, hotels, motels, timeshares, campgrounds, car rental agencies, cruise lines, travel agencies, discount travel sites, trains, buses, taxis, limousines, and ferries.

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ used to also include tourist attractions but it seems that vague category proved to be problematic and Barclays removed it. Even without tourist attractions, there’s still a pretty broad amount of expenses that could fall into the travel category, however.

Sign-up bonus

  • The current sign-up bonus is for 40,000 miles for spending $3,000 within 3 months. Update: Always check to see if the 50,000 offer is available.

That means that once you hit the minimum spend you’ll have earned 46,000 miles. These miles are redeemed at 1 cent per point for travel so that means you’ll earn the equivalent of $460 worth of statement credit that can be applied against your travel purchases. Not bad. If you’re a traveling couple and the two of you get the card, it’s an easy way to get close to $1,000 worth of travel purchases covered pretty quickly.

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Bonus earning potential 

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ doesn’t earn extra points for certain categories but it does earn 2X miles on every single purchase. That’s not a bad deal, especially if you can end up spending a lot on this card. (And actually, the bonus earning on this card could be argued to be 2.11X since you get an automatic 5% rebate on your redemption.)

Because there are no bonus categories, this is a great card to use for purchases that don’t fall within the bonus categories of your other cards and would otherwise earn 1X.

Also, don’t forget about the Barclaycard RewardsBoost. This is a web portal where you can log-in and make purchases with your Barclaycard and earn additional miles on items from a host of different retailers. There’s also the Barclaycard Travel Community, which allows you to earn miles by sharing notes and photos about your travels. You can learn more about these earning opportunities here.

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Barclays usually pulls Transunion

One great thing about Barclays is that they almost always pull Transunion for their credit cards. If you pursue Chase, Citi, and Amex cards, you’ll likely get hit pretty hard with hard pulls on your Experian and Equifax credit reports.

Thus, applying for this card can give some of your credit reports a bit of a break when it comes to applying for Chase, Citi, and Amex cards. Moreover, if you’ve got a lot of hardpulls from the aforementioned banks then the Barclays card can always be a good option to go to while you wait for time to distance you from some of your hard pulls.

Note: Barclays may sometimes pull from additional bureaus, so YMMV. 

Benefits

  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Travel accident insurance
  • Baggage delay insurance
  • Free FICO score
  • 0% APR for 12 months on balance transfers made within 45 days of opening the account. (Transfer fee is either $5 or 3% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater.)

Annual Fee

  • $89, waived the first year

The $89 annual fee is not bad at all since it is waived the first year. However, what really makes it great is that you can downgrade this card to a no annual fee card like the Barclaycard Arrival and help to preserve and improve your average age of accounts and help build up your credit score.

Verdict

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ is a good option for a travel credit card if you’re looking for a way to cover those miscellaneous travel expenses like getting to and from an airport in a taxi, rental cars, taking a train between cities, or even trying to cover hotel expenses that can’t be covered by other means. It’s also a great way for couples to quickly accumulate about $1,000 in travel credit. And finally, if you’re worried about hard-pulls adding up from the other big banks like Chase, Citi, and Amex, there’s a good chance you can give your credit report a little break because Barclays will probably pull Transunion.