How to boost your supermarket points

Many of us have supermarket loyalty cards. Tesco Clubcard has around 16 million members, while over 19 million people collect Nectar points, mostly via shopping at Sainsbury's.

Nectar has just launched a Double Value points promotion, similar to Tesco's regular Clubcard Exchanges, where you can exchange points for double their value on certain rewards, including restaurant meals, days out, trips to the cinema and swimming.

And Tesco has responded by announcing it's launching Clubcard Boost on Monday (29th July). This will replace the current Exchange and Rewards programmes. Clubcard Boost will allow you to exchange £5 of Clubcard vouchers for £10 to spend in various departments in Tesco stores and online all the way through to 31st December.

Or you can still swap them for up to four times their face value (so £20 on a £5 voucher) to spend on holidays, flights, hotels, restaurants, theme parks, cinema tickets and more.

One of the biggest advantages Clubcard and Nectar offer is that you aren't just able to collect points through your supermarket shopping. You can earn them in a variety of places.

Here are some of the ways to boost your points.

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Tesco Clubcard

You can earn one Clubcard point per £1 spent on your shopping in Tesco stores, online at Tesco.com and on purchases made at Tesco Direct. And you can also earn one point for every £2 spent on Tesco fuel.

But Tesco’s scope has expanded much further than your average supermarket and there are loads more opportunities to boost your points balance via your bills and credit cards.

For example, you can earn three points for every £1 spent on Tesco Mobile pay monthly bills, Tesco home phone, Tesco Broadband, and Tesco mobile top-ups.

You can also benefit if you’re an E.On customer too. There are 4,000 points (worth £40) up for grabs depending on how you pay your bill, how long you have been a customer and which of the new E.On tariffs you switch to. You can also earn 1,000 points if you manage your account online and 1,000 points if you become a dual fuel customer.

You can also earn one point per £3 spent at Esso petrol stations, and one point per £1 spent at online film and TV streaming site Blinkbox, The Nutri Centre and daily deals site livingsocial. You can also convert cashback you earn at cashback website Top Cashback into points, with 1p of cashback equalling one point.

If you really want to earn points fast, you could take out a Tesco credit card. All Tesco's credit cards double as a Clubcard so you can earn five points per £4 spent in Tesco and Tesco petrol stations plus one point for every £4 spent elsewhere.

Right now, Tesco is offering some market-leading credit card offers. You can take advantage of an interest-free period of 18 months with the Tesco Clubcard Credit Card for Purchases. Or you might prefer the 27-month interest-free offer on balance transfers (with a balance transfer fee of 3.15%) on the Tesco Clubcard Credit Card for Balance Transfers, which also has a 0% period on purchases for three months. Make sure you pay off your balance in full by the end of any interest-free period or you'll be charged interest.

Nectar

Typically each Nectar point is only worth 0.5p but there are lots of ways to amass them.

There are over 500 online retailers who offer points via your Nectar card if you click through from the main site or register your card. eBay for example normally offers one Nectar point per £1 spent on winning bids or Buy It Now when you click through via the Nectar eshops website. And British Gas offers points for things like submitting a meter reading or switching to Direct Debit when you register your Nectar card.

The Nectar Search toolbar powered by Yahoo gives you 100 points for downloading the tool, then one point per two searches using the toolbar (up to 100 points a month) and it also lets you know when you are on a site that can earn you Nectar points through spending.

You can also earn points by watching adverts online via Nectar Adpoints, although don't expect to get rich from this.

As well as the online bounty you can also earn points on the high street at well-known brands like Sainsbury’s, Homebase and BP. Sainsbury's is also now offering bonus points for signing up to new mobile phone service.

You can also rack up bonus points by spending on a Nectar credit card.

With the Sainsbury’s Bank Nectar Credit Card you can earn a whopping ten Nectar points per £1 spent on Sainsbury's shopping for the first three months (capped at £1,000 spend per month). That’s a potential £50-worth of points up for grabs each month.

After the first three months you can collect four Nectar points per £1 on Sainsbury's shopping and one Nectar point for every £5 spent on your card elsewhere. Other benefits of the Sainsbury’s credit card include interest-free balance transfers for the first 15 months (with a fee of 3%) as well as 0% on purchases for six months.

Elsewhere you can get 10,000 Nectar points with the American Express Nectar Credit Card when you spend at least £1,000 within the first three months. This equates to £50-worth of extra points. After this you get four Nectar points for every £1 you spend at Nectar partners or two Nectar points for every £1 spent elsewhere.

However, this card comes with a £25 annual fee so you need to spend enough on it and clear your balance in full each month to make it pay off for you.

You can also convert American Express Membership Rewards points into Nectar points, on a one-for-one basis. So if you've got a big purchase coming up that you can pay for in full, you could significantly boost your Nectar points by using the American Express Preferred Rewards charge card. That's because it's currently offering 20,000 Membership Rewards points if you spend £2,000 within the first three months. Note that as this is a charge card and not a credit card, you HAVE to pay off your balance in full each month. This card also normally charges a £125 a year fee, but this is being waived for the first year.

[See how the Clubcard and Nectar cards compare to other rewards credit cards]