IHG mentioned a cobranded bank card in the UK with Revolut in their annual report a while ago, and now enough details have emerged on Revolut’s help page. The card application will go live on June 30th and I will try to give a quick summary today.
There will be two subscription tiers available: Essential and Elite.
Fees
The Essential plan is free with a virtual card only.
The Elite plan has a monthly subscription fee of £18, with a complimentary metal card included.
Status & Elite Qualifying Night
The Essential plan comes with IHG Silver status and 5 EQNs.
The Elite plan comes with IHG Platinum status and 15 EQNs.
In year 1, your earn the EQNs after you complete the welcome offer condition (see below). From year 2, they renew if your card was active for more than 10 out of the last 12 months. Given the subscription is monthly-based the condition here is a bit unusual.
This is kind of ground-breaking. If I’m not mistaken, these are the only cards that offer IHG EQNs globally. The Chinese CITIC cobranded card offered up to 20 EQNs for hitting some spending target a few months ago (which was why I took out the card), but it was a limited-time promotion.
Sign-Up Bonus
You qualify for the launch promotion and earn an enhanced welcome offer if you apply by August 25th.
- Essential: earn 10,000 bonus points when you spend £1,000 in your first 3 months
- Elite: earn 30,000 bonus points when you spend £3,000 in your first 3 months
If you held the legacy Creation IHG card in the past, there’s also a returning customer offer:
- Essential: IHG Gold status (instead of Silver)
- Elite: a Cardmember Choice Reward, meet the welcome offer condition and choose from
- 5,000 bonus points
- 2 F&B Rewards
- 1 Confirmable Suite Upgrade
These are some decent sign-up bonuses.
Earning
- Essential: 1 on IHG spend, and 0.5 on non-IHG spend
- Elite: 6 or 4.5 on IHG foreign spend (depending on market), 3 on IHG UK / EEA spend, 3 on non-IHG international spend and 1.5 on non-IHG UK / EEA
Extra Rewards
With both subscription tiers, you earn 1 extra EQN for every £4,000 spent in a year, up to 8 per year.
On Elite, you can also earn: 1 Cardmember Choice Reward at £10,000, 1 Reward Night Certificate at £15,000, another Cardmember Choice Reward at £25,000 annual spend, and IHG One Rewards Elite Diamond status at £35,000 annual spend.
In summary, the two Revolut IHG cards are not bad at all. Being able to earn elite-qualifying nights is a very good feature, and its spending requirement for Diamond status isn’t off compared to the US equivalent (£35k v.s. $40k). Of course, the welcome bonus and earning rate are much weaker, but the UK market is very different and remember they are debit cards.
If you care about IHG hotels, you should at least get the free Essential plan and bag 5 EQNs every year.
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