Since 2016, Flybuys and Velocity have offered frequent flyer members one of the easiest ways to earn points from day-to-day spending. From groceries to liquor, gardening equipment to office supplies, it’s never been easier to earn Flybuys points with Australia’s largest loyalty program.
And once you earn enough Flybuys points, it’s a simple matter to transfer points to Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer program, so you can get soaring sooner.
This is a beginner’s guide to help newcomers learn about the world of points.
Here’s everything you need to know about Flybuys:
How to transfer Flybuys points to Velocity
It’s easy to get started. You just need to have an account in both programs. Then link your accounts here.
- A minimum of 1,000 Flybuys points can be transferred over 500 Velocity Points.
- You can transfer unlimited points annually, in 1,000 Flybuys points increments.
- Points can be transferred manually, or set to ‘Auto Transfer’.
- You’ll normally get the transferred points (and any bonuses) instantly.
Read more: How to transfer your Flybuys points to Velocity →
Keep an eye out for bonus transfer offers between Flybuys and Velocity. Though these are increasingly rare, we have seen an occasional 5%-10% bonus on a one-off transfer offer.
How to earn Velocity Status Credits with Flybuys
Want to upgrade your status to Gold or Platinum, and get status perks sooner? Lounge access and priority check-in counters are two of the most sought-after benefits for elite frequent flyers. With Flybuys, you have another way to keep your Status Credits balance topped up.
- You’ll also earn 1 Velocity Status Credit for every $100 spent at Coles, Coles Online, Liquorland and First Choice Liquor. It doesn’t have to be in one transaction – it’s calculated across your whole monthly spend.
- There’s a limit of 10 Velocity Status Credits that can be earned each month through Flybuys spend. So in one year, you can get a maximum of 120 Status Credits.
- Occasionally (usually around Christmas), Flybuys may launch a promotion to earn double or even quadruple Status Credits (up to 4 SCs per $100 spent).
To be clear, you won’t earn any status perks outright just from shopping at Coles. But it will help some of you with earning or maintaining status levels in conjunction with flying with Virgin Australia.
Boost your Flybuys balance with bonus offers
Now that you know the basics, the secret is accumulating those points quickly. If you just go along earning one Flybuys point per dollar, it might take you years to achieve any meaningful reward! So the trick is to make use of bonus Flybuys offers, where thousands of points await.
As in the screenshot below, many of these offers are tailored. If you spend more with Flybuys, you’ll start to see offers with higher thresholds. Conversely, if you take a bit of a break (like I have), then you’ll get more tempting offers such as the ‘spend $60 and get 2,400 points’ deal.
TIP: If possible, alternate who uses their Flybuys card within a family, so the offers may improve over time. Or if you’re on your own, perhaps stop using Flybuys for a while and see if the offers get better.
Savvy shoppers will wait for Coles’ regular 10,000 bonus points deal (worth 5,000 Velocity Points). To snag this bonus, you just need to spend a certain amount at Coles every week, for four weeks, to get the prize. Once again, the spend thresholds are tailored to how often you shop at Coles – the more you shop, the higher the threshold.
Also check out Flybuys’ other partners for plenty of other ways to get bonus points, including utilities, health insurance, travel and more.
Read more: A beginner’s guide to earning points with Flybuys →
Flybuys and Velocity: how the maths stacks up
Flybuys points are worth a minimum of 0.5 cents per point. It’s easy to get this with minimal fuss, by redeeming 2,000 points for $10 off at Coles. This is our baseline value.
The challenge is how to get even more value in flights, by transferring points to Velocity Frequent Flyer. For example, let’s say you’ve diligently acquired 72,000 Flybuys Points, worth $360 at the checkout.
With that haul, you can transfer it to 36,000 Velocity Points. That’s then enough to redeem a one-way Business Class reward seat from Melbourne to Perth or Sydney to Nadi (Fiji), for example. Even with flight taxes and surcharges added on, your points will certainly be worth a lot more than $360.
You can also use Velocity Points on partner airlines such as Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Air Canada and United. Save up even more Flybuys points over time to enjoy an international Business Class reward seat!
For example, a one-way Singapore Airlines flight from Australia to Singapore in Business Class ranges from 38,000 Velocity Points (departing Darwin) to 67,000 points (departing Melbourne), plus fees and taxes. If you wanted to redeem that by converting Flybuys Points, you’d need to earn from 76,000 to 134,000 Flybuys points and send it to Velocity Frequent Flyer.
Summing up
The Velocity-Flybuys partnership is great for members who already shop in the Flybuys ecosystem, and want to earn points for rewards on Virgin Australia and its partner airlines. With bonus points offers, you can snag thousands of points with minimal effort.
Flybuys isn’t Australia’s largest loyalty program without good reason. It has a huge membership base and plenty of partners. It’s also a flexible points program, with different rewards. While getting $10 off at Coles is a useful option to have, you’ll still get the best value transferring points to Velocity Frequent Flyer.
Also read: maximising frequent flyer points through supermarkets →
The VA partner chart is online
Remember you’ll get a 5,000-Starpoint bonus when for every 20,000-Starpoint block transferred.
I use both a velocity card and a prepaid Coles credit card to earn flybuys points (plus insurances).
I haven’t yet transferred my flybuys points over to velocity because I thought I would be losing out – so thank you for this article.
Coles have recently announced they’re no longer issuing prepaid credit cards and velocity is still promoting a bonus to transfer, over 6 months later.
Do you think there’s any particular reason behind this?
I understand that the value is of Velocity is gained by redeeming flights, etc, but it’s scary how a noob could potentially lose 50% of their value by rushing to convert their Flybuys points and not understanding how to get maximum value from the Velocity scheme.
I have a quick question. I have been saving my Flybuys points to use for accommodation at some time in the future. Do you think I should continue saving them as Flybuys point or should I send them across to Velocity?
Yes, when redeeming you would try to get the highest redemption value per point, but assuming that you’ll be able to land that redemption at that value may be putting the carriage before the horse. The points valuation post is a good place to start to get your head around FF values.
https://www.pointhacks.com.au/rewards-points-valuations/
I am curious as to how you work out what points are worth. If I have 100,000 Flybuys points ($500 worth of Coles shopping) and convert them to velocity I will receive 43500 points or 50025 with the 15% bonus. These points would convert to 37043 Krisflyer points which calculated on a $7000 business class flight to Europe (after taxes) is equivalent to $1600.Is this right or am I miscalculating somewhere.
Can you let me know how you worked this part out (not the conversion, but the $7,000 flight -> $1600 points value component. Thanks!
Further benefits include no intl fees much like the 28 Degrees MC, and the fact you earn FlyBuys points on those intl transactions, makes this a pretty decent MasterCard to keep in your wallet when travelling. And of course, FlyBuys points stack when you scan at the checkout at Coles.
Other benefits include concierge service (which I haven’t tried), and free delivery on Coles Online orders over $100 (also a benefit I have yet to take advantage of). Points earned from MC spend are allocated to your FB account daily, and FB>VA transfers are pretty much immediate, something I already tested.
The card typically doesn’t have massive sign up bonuses, but they do run promos on a semi-regular basis of $100 off a Coles shop, or 20000 bonus points, which is enough to offset the first year’s fee. The low $89 annual fee and min credit limit of $6000 makes this a relatively accessible card with a decent points earn, meaning that the card can easily break even, especially if you make lots of foreign currency purchases.
To draw a quick comparison after the first year of card ownership, lets take a St George Signature Visa card. It carries a $279 annual fee and would have a 10% birthday bonus earning 0.825 QF points per dollar spent worth 1.4c each. The two complimentary Qantas Lounge passes are pegged at $50 each for the sake of the argument. If we only count local spend, the St George card would have to spend over $375000* before overtaking the Coles Rewards MC earning 0.87 VA points worth 1.3c each. If we take a 15% FB>VA transfer bonus in to the equation, the lines never even cross.
Switching over to KrisFlyer on the St George card (worth 1.7c each) but pegging the Priority Pass lounge passes at only $35 each (if that, seeing as how hard it is to redeem these passes locally), you’d have to spend $44200 to benefit over a Coles Rewards MC. After a 15% FB>VA bonus? $117900*.
I’ve had this card for a few years now, and in my mind this card has gone from an average card to a fantastic card. Yes, I did a lot of geeking out over the weekend, with lots of comparisons. =]
*Of course this doesn’t take into account the FB>VA transfer limit, but obviously this is just for illustration purposes. If you’re really spending that much anyway, you’d probably be better off with neither card and probably should go for something like the Citi Prestige.
Am I right in my assumption that it will in some cases still be better to transfer any flybuys points you have to Etihad Guest for Virgin Australia Domestic economy reward redemptions?
One example that springs to mind would be Melbourne to Hamilton Island for 6900 Etihad Guest Miles plus taxes which is equivalent to 17,250 fly buys points at the current transfer rate of 10,000 flybuys points for 4,000 Etihad Guest miles
If redeeming a seat through Virgin this would set you back 17,800 Velocity points plus taxes which using the standard transfer rate of 2000 flybuys points for 870 velocity points comes out at 40,920 flybuys points. Even at the current bonus 15% transfer rate would still come in at 35,582 flybuys points
So status credits double-dipping wouldn’t work unfortunately, but would you still get the double up on flybuys points?
I am curious as to how you work out what points are worth. If I have 100,000 Flybuys points ($500 worth of Coles shopping) and convert them to velocity I will receive 43500 points or 50025 with the 15% bonus. These points would convert to 37043 Krisflyer points which calculated on a $7000 business class flight to Europe (after taxes) is equivalent to $1600.Is this right or am I miscalculating somewhere.
A lot of us have been wondering when are you going to cover the fare structure changes and frequent flyer changes that VA have made recently. The getaway, elevate and freedom fares and changes to SC earn is a huge deal and it hasn’t been mentioned once on pointhacks.