[Offer Currently Expired]
With the recent increase of the sign-up bonus for the Barclaycard Arrival Plusâ„¢ World Elite MasterCard® to an all-time high of 50,000 points, there’s no better time to get the card if it’s been on your radar.
Aside from earning 2x on all purchases, the competitive bonus can be redeemed for $525 worth of travel – and you can redeem your points for far more than just flights or hotel nights.
50,000 Point Sign Up Bonus (Worth ~$525 towards travel purchases)
As mentioned, the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® is offering an historically-high bonus of 50,000 points (up from 40,000 points) after spending $3,000 in the first 90 days of account opening.
A minimum redemption is 10,000 points (good for $100), and 5 percent of your points (2,500) are credited back to your account for a future redemption. The card earns 2x points per dollar on all purchases, so there’s no need to keep track of bonus categories. The annual fee of $89 is waived the first year. The points do not expire as long as an account remains open.
When a Fixed Redemption Makes Sense
With crazy flight deals happening all the time now, like flights to Europe for under $300 round trip (including the recent and insane New York – Stockholm / Oslo flight sale for as low as $212 round-trip), it makes total sense in these cases to purchase flights using a fixed-value redemption model like from the Barclaycard Arrival Plusâ„¢ World Elite MasterCard® instead of using traditional airline miles to get more “bang for your buck” and keep cash in your pocket.
Just think of how amazing of a value it is to potentially get 2-round trip tickets to Europe with one single sign-up bonus!
Beautiful Stockholm sunset picture taken at 12:01 am from my visit last summer.
Broad Spectrum of Travel Redemptions
The single thing I love most about this card is the flexibility to use the miles on travel purchases tailored to how you spend already – you might even be surprised at some of the things Barclaycard considers to be travel purchases!
Whether it be amusement park tickets, a commuter bus pass, or even long-term airport parking, you have a full 120 days after the transaction to use points to pay for your previous travel purchases on your account.
Sometimes it’s nice to click “redeem points” and to see an eligible purchase appear that I wouldn’t normally consider a traditional “travel purchase” (in my case, it was an overnight ferry ride from Athens to Crete this summer).
An Attainable Product
If you’ve been in the points game for a while, you know how difficult it’s become to get approved for new cards. With some issuers setting limits of 5 new accounts over the past 24 months, and others saying a bonus is only available “once per lifetime”, it’s worth pointing out that the Barclaycard Arrival Plusâ„¢ World Elite MasterCard® is a pretty attainable / easy card to get approved for because there aren’t any limits or restrictions on the bonus in place.
Earn Arrivals Miles for Sharing Travel Stories
I recently shared an easy way to earn up to $200 per month to use towards travel purchases. Similar to TripAdvisor (but with an added-incentive), the Barclaycard Travel Community is a unique way that you can earn free miles just for sharing your travel stories and tips. The Barclaycard Travel Community is open to everyone, but it is especially useful if you have an Arrivals card.
Access to Barclaycard Rewards Boost Shopping Portal
You can earn extra miles and points with almost every online purchase, and it’s silly to leave extra miles on the table. I just discovered the Barclaycard RewardsBoost Program, exclusively for Barclaycard holders, which allows you to earn extra miles for shopping online at hundreds of merchants. There are some great savings, especially for many travel merchants that aren’t available in other credit card travel portals.
For instance, you can earn 4x on IHG hotel bookings + the 2x you’d automatically earn on all purchases made with the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®. No other credit card portal offers points for IHG bookings when I did a comparison search on CashBackMonitor.com.
Reliable Chip & Pin Technology
Chip & Pin technology has evolved over the years, but it’s not exactly a flawless experience when using American chip & pin cards abroad. For instance, some cards will reject a transaction without a signature, but the Arrival Plus card is one of the few cards you can use abroad when it’s not a person-to-person transaction (a train or bus-stop kiosk, for example).
Even better, the Barclaycard Arrival Plusâ„¢ World Elite MasterCard® does not charge foreign transaction fees, so it’s a no-brainer to take along on international trips.
Free FICO credit score.
Another valuable card-member tidbit is that the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® is one of the credit cards that offer you free access to your online FICO® credit score at anytime, so you can continuously monitor your credit.
Bottom Line
The Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® is a very attractive and competitive fixed-redemption travel credit card because it earns 2x on all purchases. 50,000 miles is worth ~$525 towards travel purchases.
What are your favorite benefits of the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®?
Angelina, Thanks for sharing and I have this card for the second time so it is a no brainer the first year. However, I have to wonder if it’s worth keeping after the first year. Why not just get a Citi Double Cash card and get 2% cash back with no annual fee and use the cash to buy points with frequent traveler programs when they run mileage sales?
Yes, Barclay’s ends up being 2.1% cash back, but you have to purchase a lot for that 0.1% difference to total the $85 annual fee.
One other point, PNC now has a copycat product (https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/banking/credit-cards/pnc-premier-traveler-visa-credit-card.html) and while it has no rebate, it allows you to redeem only 5,000 miles while Barclay’s now requires a 10,000 mile minimum redemption!
Great article! Angelina – do you know what happened to the Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard®? I can’t seem to find the no-annual fee version anywhere. Did they get rid of this product?
Thanks for advice -Bret