When you use your RBS Reward credit cards to make purchases, you'll earn a type of points called Rewards. It's best to view Rewards as cash back since £5 in Rewards are equal to £5 on average when redeemed.
Once you grow your balance to at least £5, you can redeem Rewards in one of the three following ways:
- Trade Up
- Bank Them
- Donate To Charity
Trade Up
Trade up allows you to redeem your rewards for both physical and electronic gift cards with a select group of partner retailers. When choosing to go this route, RBS will give you bonus rewards back to your account with select partner retailers.
For example, here's the Trade Up option for a John Lewis Partnership eGift Card:
- £10 Rewards = £10 John Lewis Partnership eGift Card + 4% Rewards
- £25 Rewards = £25 John Lewis Partnership eGift Card + 4% Rewards
- £50 Rewards = £50 John Lewis Partnership eGift Card + 4% Rewards
With this redemption, you would receive a bonus 4% back in Rewards which is 4% higher than what you would earn if you were to cash out your Rewards to your bank account. This is the best way to get the most out of your RBS Rewards.
You can check out the mobile app to see the full and most up-to-date list of retailers. Here are a few examples of RBS's retailers:
- John Lewis & Partners
- Waitrose & Partners
- Argos
- Morrisons
- Greggs
- Caffe Nero
- Currys
- Marks & Spencer
- B&Q
- TK Maxx
- Cineworld
Exchange Calculator
Use our exchange calculator to find out how much you can earn in bonus Rewards when using the Trade Up option with select retailers.
Do note that the bonus percentage can change at any time, so you'll want to check the mobile app to see what the current rates are.
RBS Rewards To Avios
RBS Rewards can be converted to Avios using the Trade Up option. You can convert Rewards in the following increments:
- £10 Rewards = 1,170 British Airways Avios
- £20 Rewards = 2,350 British Airways Avios
- £50 Rewards = 5,870 British Airways Avios
These trade up increments comes out to being about 117 Avios for every £1 in RBS Rewards earned. (Do note that the £20 Reward and £50 Reward offers just a microscopic amount more value - 117.5 and 117.4 Avios/£1 respectively).
So, is this a good redemption option? Yes if you value Avios.
Avios are worth around 1p each on average which means you'll be earning additional value with this exchange. And that's just the average value of Avios as you can possibly get higher redemptions depending on the effort of research you put in.
This makes this trade up option British Airways Avios one of the best redemption options for RBS Rewards.
RBS Rewards To Emirates Miles
RBS Rewards can be converted to Emirates Skywards using the Trade up option. You can convert Rewards to Skywards miles in the following increments:
- £10 Rewards = 770 Skywards Miles
- £50 Rewards = 3,850 Skywards Miles
- £100 Rewards = 7,770 Skywards Miles
This comes out to being 77 Skywards Miles per £1 in Rewards traded. With our valuations of Skywards Miles being worth around 1p each, this trade up option is far from the best since you'll be receiving about 0.77p in value for every £1 in Rewards.
Converting RBS Rewards to Emirates would only make sense if you had an excellent redemption lined up with Emirates that would give your miles significantly high value or if you were a few Skywards miles short of a redemption and needed to top off your account.
Other Ways To Redeem
Outside of the Trade Up option, you can Bank your RBS Rewards or donate them to charity.
Bank Rewards into your bank account
You can cash out your RBS Reward Points and deposit them directly into your bank account. This gives you a flat value of 1p since you're looking at equal face value. So if you cashed out £75 in Rewards, you would end up with £75 in your bank account.
Donate
RBS Rewards can be donated to charity starting at £5 in Rewards. There's a large handful to choose from including, but not limited to:
- Barnado's
- Macmillan Cancer Support
- Cancer Research UK
- NSPCC
- Princes Trust
- RNIB
- Alzheimer's Society
- British Heart Foundation
- Disasters Emergency Committee
How to earn Rewards
RBS Rewards can be earned shopping online and in-store at participating retailers. You can also earn additional Rewards on your day-to-day purchases when using the RBS Reward credit card or RBS Reward Black Credit Card.