How to Redeem Your Barclaycard Miles for Travel
Update: The bonus on the Barclaycard Arrival is now 5%, see the Barclaycard Arrival Plus $420+ Sign Up Bonus for details. The change from 10% to 5% will alter the calculations below.
In the Best Way to Maximize Barclaycard Arrival Points for 2.27% I highlighted that the highest rate of redemption for the Barclaycard points is using their “Pay yourself back for travel” feature.
However, using the travel reward process isn’t exactly the most intuitive process. In fact, when I saw my mom use her Barclaycard Arrival* card last weekend, I asked her if she knew how to redeem her points for her upcoming travel plans. She stated that she wanted the card for the sign up bonus and to use for travel rewards, but she wasn’t exactly sure how to redeem the miles for travel.
How to Redeem Your Barclaycard Miles for Travel
For those of you who also got the Barcalycard for the $440+ sign up bonus and are now trying to figure out how to redeem your travel rewards, here’s a step-by-step guide I put together to walk you (and my mom) through the process.
Make Travel Purchase and Manage Rewards
First, make your travel purchase using your Barclaycard Arrival card. After your travel transaction posts to your account, login to your account and redeem miles within 90 days of your purchase. To do this, login to your account online and select manage rewards from the account summary screen:
Pay Yourself Back for Travel
Select the option to pay yourself back for travel and select redeem now:
Select Travel Transaction
You’ll see a list of your travel transactions. The travel rewards convert to a statement credit at a rate of $25 for 2,500 points. Select redeem now on the transaction you want a credit for:
Redeem Miles
Now, you’ll see an option for the different combinations and how many miles you can use to redeem on your travel transaction. Here’s where you need to watch out for the loss of miles due to rounding if you redeem for the full travel credit. You’ll notice on my account, I’m short the miles for the full cost of this hotel bill, so it’s not an issue. Select the number of miles you want to redeem:
Checkout and Confirm
Confirm your order and checkout:
Bonus Miles
In addition, you’ll earn 10% more points for the redemption. This is where the Barclaycard Arrival earns additional value in a travel reward redemption:
Rewards History
Once you redeem your travel reward, you’ll see a statement credit on your account. You can select rewards history to view all of your redemptions:
Travel Codes
Some of you might have noticed that our bill from the Holiday Inn was only $60. This was actually dinner at the hotel restaurant charged to our room. The hotel stay itself was actually free from my last Credit Card Application Spree.
Don’t forget to charge your meals to your room when possible. However, it will all depend on how the merchant codes your transaction. If it gets coded as a travel purchase (like ours did) you’ll be able to redeem your miles for dining! We had another hotel stay last weekend where the restaurant charges showed up as dining codes, so we weren’t able to use the travel redemption. It’s worth a shot!
More on the Barclaycard Arrival
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