The Best Credit Cards for Earning Qantas Points

Six cards available to Australian applicants earn Qantas Points. Their sign-up bonuses run from 60,000 to 150,000 points, and their annual fees run from nothing in the first year to $1,200. Ranking them on the bonus alone gets you the wrong card.

At 1.5 cents per point, the working figure for economy Classic Rewards, a 100,000 point bonus is worth about $1,500. That comfortably beats any fee in the first year. Year two is where the cards separate.

An annual fee needs to be covered by the points the card earns you in a normal year, not by the bonus. At 1.5 cents per point, a $425 fee needs about 28,000 points a year to break even. At 1 point per dollar, that is $28,000 of card spending.

Run that against your own figure. Someone putting $2,000 a month through a card earns 24,000 points a year on a 1 point rate, which falls short of the ANZ fee and clears the HSBC one twice over.

Five of the six Qantas cards charge 3 per cent on overseas purchases. HSBC charges 2 per cent, and Qantas Premier Titanium charges nothing at all.

That column matters more than it looks on a travel card. Spend $4,000 overseas on a two-week trip and 3 per cent costs you $120, which is roughly 8,000 Qantas Points of value handed back at the till.

The fix is to carry a second card for overseas spending rather than to pick a card on that column alone. Our travel money guides cover the cards that charge nothing on foreign currency.

Qantas Premier Titanium, at 150,000 points on $5,000 of spend within the qualifying period. The catch is a $1,200 annual fee charged in year one, so the net position is about $1,050 of point value after the fee at 1.5 cents.

ANZ Frequent Flyer Black nets more: 130,000 points against a $425 fee leaves roughly $1,525 of value. On first-year economics it beats the larger bonus.

It depends what happens in year two. HSBC Platinum Qantas waives the first year and charges $199 after, so 60,000 points cost nothing up front and the ongoing fee is the lowest in the set.

The earn rate is also the lowest at 0.75 points per dollar, so $199 needs about $17,700 of annual spending to justify. For a moderate spender who travels, the 2 per cent foreign transaction fee makes it the least expensive card here to hold and use.

No, and many people close the card before the second fee falls due. Issuers set eligibility rules on how recently you held a card in the same family, so closing and reapplying later usually carries a waiting period.

Closing a card also removes an available credit line, which affects your borrowing capacity. If a mortgage application is coming, leave the card decisions until after settlement.

The bonus decides year one and almost every card wins that year. Your annual spending decides every year after it, and that is the number to run before you apply.

Work out what you put through a card in a normal year, multiply by the earn rate, value the result at 1.5 cents, and compare it to the ongoing fee. Anything that fails that test is a one-year card.

Our credit card comparison runs that calculation across spending levels, and our guide to what a Qantas point is worth explains where the 1.5 cent figure comes from.