Barclays Arrival World Mastercard Minimum Spend To Increase

UPDATE: The best current offer on this card is now for 40,000 miles after spending $3000 within first 90 days. 

Barclays Arrival™ World Mastercard®

One of the most compelling new offerings from Barclays is the Arrival™ World Mastercard®, which is an extremely lucrative travel cashback credit card:

• It offers two miles per dollar spent on all purchases
• You get a 10% refund on miles when you redeem them
• Each mile can redeemed for one cent towards the cost of travel, meaning you’re getting a return of ~2.22 cents per dollar spent

~2.2% cash back is a return that’s tough to beat for spend that otherwise doesn’t fit in a “bonus” category.

The sign-up bonus on the card is 40,000 miles after spending $3,000 within first 90 days (with each “mile” getting you a cent towards the cost of travel). The annual fee is $89, and it’s waived for the first year.

Apparently the minimum spend on the card will soon increase from $1,000 to $3,000 within 90 days. While we don’t yet have an exact timeline, it’s supposed to be very soon.

So it’s probably not worth “rushing” to apply for it, though this is definitely something to keep in mind for your next round of credit card applications.

The Barclays Arrival can be awesome for offsetting the aspects of travel that can’t efficiently be redeemed for with “traditional” miles. For example, I recently wrote how Arrival miles can be great for offsetting the fuel surcharges on award tickets, given that in a post-devaluation world many of the best airline award redemption values involve hefty fuel surcharges and fees.

Arrival miles can also be really valuable for car rentals, non-chain hotels, domestic tickets or international economy tickets (since you’d still be eligible for mileage accrual, upgrades, etc.). The miles are “good as cash,” in the sense that you can make whatever travel purchases you want and then request reimbursement after the fact. There are no silly travel portals you have to book through in order to qualify.

If I hear of an exact date for the change I’ll be sure to post again.