Monese + Avios: A current account that’s also a reward centre

Santiago Vaquero
Monese Insights
Published in
4 min readJun 24, 2019

We’re always working to offer more potential and value to our customers. That’s why we’re the world’s first to link with your Avios accounts.

Why Avios?

We’re exclusive partners with Avios, a global loyalty points scheme which includes airlines like Aer Lingus, Flybe, Iberia, Vueling and British Airways.

Avios members can collect Avios points when they fly with one of the above airlines or also by shopping in the extensive Avios eStore, with hundreds of retailers. Those points can then be redeemed in flights as well as hotel, car rental and other experiences. Find out more about the Avios programme here.

It’s also used by hundreds of retail and service brands like ASOS, John Lewis, Booking, Tesco, Trainline, Apple and Just Eat.

Loved by millions of frequent fliers keen to earn a free flight or discount on the high street, Avios points have become an obsession for many, spawning entire online communities dedicated to hunting for deals and collecting more points.

On Feb 16th, we announced the Avios account integrated within the Monese app. This means our customers would now be able to link an existing British Airways Executive Club account to Monese. Once done, their Avios account is presented alongside their Monese personal account, enabling them to track their points to manage them all within the app.

The app also allows browsing through a list of retailers:

More than 600 select eStore retailers to collect Avios while you shop.

Once they’ve accrued a decent amount, we encourage them to live a little! They can redeem their Avios to purchase flights, hotel bookings, activities — and cases of champagne.

The integration proved challenging from a development standpoint. With a concerted team effort by the entire Monese Rewards team, coupled with an effective collaboration between ourselves, Avios and British Airways, we built an aspirational product feature that we were excited to launch. This has enabled our customers to view their Avios balance and recent transactions alongside their everyday spending.

Most Avios points are spent on travel-related services, making Monese the perfect travel companion.

In order to give some weight to the idea of Avios points as a currency, we implement a symbol font to use on the balances throughout the app. This implementation works well within the context of the Monese app’s multi-language support. Meaning that any customer speaking any one of our 12 languages are provided with a clear explanation as to how they can collect and redeem their Avios points.

Since its initial release, we’ve been adding new functionalities to the feature. This has included enabling cards to be actively linked to Avios accounts in-app — meaning that users collect points whenever they spend using their card.

Monese cards can be linked in-app

We also worked to integrate Avios into our own ‘Invite and Earn’ referral program. Traditionally we’ve always sent customers a small cash reward whenever they refer to a friend or family member. Now, they have the option to collect Avios points instead if they’re on Premium plan.

We’ve had great feedback from customers about the Monese app’s support of such a popular reward currency. A lot of exciting things are due to come.

It’s been really exciting to learn how our customers are using the Avios product and we can’t wait to continue to improve the integration and reward our customers as much as we can.

Find additional information at monese.com

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