Update: This offer is expired.

Update 02/20/14: The Minimum spend requirement to get the 40,000 point bonus, has now gone up to $3,000 spend within the first 90 days. The 20,000 bonus point offer on the no annual fee version of the BarclayCard Arrival, still only requires $1,000 spend within 90 days
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The Barclaycard Arrival World Mastercard is one of the best cash back credit cards out there. It offers a nice 2 percent cash-back (in the form of points) on ALL purchases, plus an additional 10% back upon redeeming your points, so effectively you are getting a nice 2.2% back on all purchases.

Plus, it also offers 40,000 bonus points for spending $1,000 within the first 90 days. Upon redeeming those 40,000 bonus points you will get the 10% bonus which will be 4,000 points which in essence means that you are really getting 44,000 bonus points or in dollar terms, $440 free. This is being advertised as a limited time offer, the end date is unknown.

The way to redeem the points at full value though is to redeem them for “Travel Expenses”. That means any time you charge travel to your card you will have the option of paying for the travel with your points at 1 cent value per point (+ you’ll get the 10% back).

The travel can be booked via any booking site or straight from the agency etc;. Airlines, Travel Agencies & Tour Operators, Hotels, Motels & Resorts, Cruise Lines, Passenger Railways and Car Rental Agencies are all considered travel expenses. Once the charge shows up on your account you can the simply go online to your Barclays account (see below) and request that the purchase be refunded using your points.

For example if you spend $420 dollars on a plane ticket and have 42,000 points from the bonus from opening the card and spending the $1,000, you’ll be able to get a $420 cash refund. Plus, you’ll also get 4,200 points redeposited to your account worth $42.

This card also doesn’t charge any foreign transaction fees. The annual fee is waived for the first year. After the first year is up, if you do not want to pay the $89 annual fee, simply call up Barclays and downgrade to the no annual fee version of the BarclayCard Arrival World Mastercard. The main differences between the Annual fee version and the no annual fee version is that the no annual fee version only gives a 20,000 point signup bonus and you only get 2 points on travel and dining purchases. The no annual fee version also gives a 10% point refund with every redemption and has no foreign transaction fees.

Also a nice perk about Barclays, is that they generally only pull from Transunion no matter your location, as opposed to Chase, Amex or Citi. That mean’s that Chase, Amex or Citi will not see the credit pull from Barclays or vice versa. Though, Barclays will see all of your recently opened cards if they are over 30 days old. Another great thing is that if you are maxed applying for cards from Chase or Amex here’s another great offer you can take advantage of. Click here to get your real Transunion score for free .

Don’t have any travel expenses? No problem. You can book a refundable ticket from an airline to get your points converted to cash without actually needing to travel. Another option is to purchase gift cards from the airlines such as southwest, Delta etc; which can be used at a later date or you can sell them to GiftCardMall or Raise etc;. The easiest, quickest and simplest option though is to by a refundable ticket, here’s an example of how to do that.

1. Go to Delta.com.
2. Choose any dates you like and choose any departure and arrival city.
3. Once your itinerary shows up, click on “Flex Fare” under “Buy a refundable ticket”. (see picture right below)
4. Enter passenger info and purchase ticket with the Barclaycard Arrival credit card.
5. Just call up Delta or cancel your ticket online. The charge and credit will show up on your card as 2 separate transactions. You will then be able (even though the ticket is already cancelled) to “pay for your ticket” with the points which will be a statement credit on your account.

Here’s how to request the travel purchase be refunded using your points.

Step 1: Log-in to you Barclays on-line account and click on “Manage Rewards”.

Step 2: Under pay yourself back for travel, click on “Redeem Now”.

Step 3: You should now see all your travel related purchase listed. Choose the one you want refunded and click on “Redeem now”.

Step 4: Choose the amount of miles you want to redeem and click “Redeem”.

Step 5: Now click on “Checkout”.

Step 6: Your statement credit should now post within 2-3 days. Additionally, you should receive 10% of you point redemption back in your rewards balance. In our case we redeemed 35,000 points, so we received 3,500 points back.