Yonder Credit Card – Possibly the Best Mastercard for Londoners

Long-term readers of Thrifty Points will know that we cover American Express cards in detail. However, we rarely come across a Visa or Mastercard which offers our loyal followers real value. I’ll go into the reasons for this in a little more detail later, but with a new kid on the block, the Yonder credit card, I suspect this may change.  Within this Yonder credit card review, we’ll be looking at the various benefits provided and drilling down into the real value these offer customers. 

Let’s start off with the boring bits. The new Yonder card is powered by Mastercard, with a 23.94% purchase rate reflecting 59.3% APR variable including the monthly fee of £15 (although you’ll get the first 3 months free).

Yes, that’s right, the Yonder credit card does come with a £15 monthly fee. However, as you’ll see from our analysis later in this article, for some this is likely to be more than offset by the benefits provided.  

Yonder Credit Card Benefits

For those living in London, Yonder offers some interesting reward options.  We understand that in due course these will be rolled out across the UK, but for the time being, if you’re not regularly travelling into London you’ll struggle to make the most of these.

Sign-Up Reward – Upon signing up to the Yonder credit card you’ll receive a one-off welcome experience. Options at the time of writing this review include £50 credit to use at either Kricket, Lina Stores, Morito and Mr Foggs. I’ve opted for Kricket – as it’s close to the office – and plan on taking a client in the next couple of weeks.

Earn 1 point for every £1 spent – When you spend on the Yonder card you’ll earn a minimum of 1 point for every £1 of card spend, increasing to up to 5 points per £1 if you choose to spend at a Yonder partner –- more on this later.

No FX fees – Whilst American Express cards can offer great redemption value for customers, the foreign exchange fees make them somewhat redundant when travelling abroad. With no fx fees, the Yonder card is ideal for those who travel frequently.  

Worldwide family travel insurance – Worldwide family travel insurance for the cardholder, partner and children under 25 is offered to holders of the Yonder credit card. A list of all benefits can be found here, with stolen and delayed baggage, travel cancellation and delays, personal liability and medical expenses covered, all with no excess when you claim. One particularly valuable benefit is car hire excess – no more being upsold at the airport! As always, read the T&Cs for full details.  

Finally, as the Yonder credit card is on the Mastercard network, you could access the Mastercard World Elite benefits, which include entertainment packages and discounts on travel. Between us, this isn’t a game changer, but I wanted to include it for completeness… 

Yonder Card Review – What do we think the benefits are worth?

Let’s take a full dive into the Yonder card benefits and work out whether the £15 monthly fee provides real value for its customers. However, before we do this, I’d stress once more that as all the current rewards are for experiences in London, those who do not visit London on a regular basis will likely get zero value – although teaser alert, if you do live in London, this card could be your new best friend…  

For this worked example, we’ll assume that a customer has recently signed up, will spend on average £1,200 per month on the Yonder card and will benefit from both the 3-month free period as well as the £50 restaurant credit.

Let’s start with the ‘easiest’ benefit – worldwide family travel insurance. A quick search of a price comparison website provides the following value for this benefit:

• Single: £92
• Couple: £147
• Family: £147

Clearly if you have a large family this provides significantly more value than a single traveller. As with all our credit card value calculations, let’s adopt the worst-case scenario of £92 of value for this scenario.  

Now most people would assume that the £50 restaurant credit is worth £50, but this assumes that you were going to head to that particular restaurant anyway and spend the full £50 credit in one sitting. In this case, I’ve redeemed mine for Kricket, which is situated close to my office, although it isn’t somewhere I was planning on going in the next month. To arrive at an opinion of value for this benefit, I tend to adopt the following approach – how much discount would I need to be offered to visit the restaurant. Being slightly thrifty (the name’s in the website!), I’d suggest somewhere in the region of 40% discount, for me, making this benefit worth say £30.  

Now the real value sits within the points you can earn from spending on the card and, as I mentioned, this ranges from 1 point for every £1 spent up to 3 points per £1 if you spend at Yonder partners. So what is a Yonder point worth?, I hear you ask. Well let’s take a look at some of the redemption opportunities and see…

At the date of writing this review, there are currently 8 redemption options available. A summary of which is set out below.

One benefit I particularly like the look of is the Yonder lunches – not only does this option offer the best value per point, Yonder have teamed up with 8 lunch destinations with a total of 36 outlets. Two of these are within 50m of my office, and I frequently visit (say once or twice a month). So based on our assumed monthly spend of £1,200, this would provide a base-case scenario of 1,200 points, which if redeemed at a place you’d be visiting anyway (therefore no discount required) could provide as much as £34.80 of value per month or £417.50 per year.  

Combining the 3 benefits gives a total value somewhere in the region of £539.50 (clearly this will vary depending on your personal circumstances) and would therefore more than offset the first year’s annual fee of £135 (£180 in year 2).  

How does this compare to other types of credit cards?

If you’re in the market for a straightforward cashback credit card, nothing beats the American Express Platinum Cashback Card which offers a minimum of 1.25% cashback on all spend. 

So how does the Yonder credit card compare? Well, adopting the scenario above and deducting the annual fee of £180 per year from the perceived benefit (£539.50) provides a net annual value to the consumer of roughly £359.50 from an assumed spend of £1,200 per month or £14,400 of annual spend. This would equate to nearly 2.5% of value for every £1 spent – unheard of for a Mastercard!

How I used my Yonder card

I’ve had my Yonder card for nearly a month now and have managed to put an upcoming holiday on the card, generating nearly 4,000 points. So how do I plan on spending these? Well, there are a couple of options which take my fancy.  

Firstly, I’ve signed up to the welcome experience, totalling £50, at the restaurant Kricket and will not eat (excuse the pun) into my points.   

At the moment the Yonder lunches make most sense. With Honi Poke and Farmer J almost adjacent to my office, I can get 11 free lunches – who said there isn’t such a thing as a free lunch! Although I suspect when my wife reads this article she’ll be making sure the points are spent on an evening out – my guess is Granger & Co but I’ll let you know in the comments section below 🙂

Yonder Card Review – Summary

Let’s wrap up this Yonder credit card review. Starting with those who should avoid – if you live outside of London, I’m afraid this isn’t the card for you. However, for those who either live in London or regularly travel in (like me), we’ve demonstrated above that for some users the card can offer value in the region of 2.5% per £1 spent – well in excess of similar Mastercard products as well as my favourite American Express card.

I hope you’ve found this Yonder Card review useful, and as always please do comment if you have any queries. Please do share this post if you think friends would be interested.

A link to the application form for the Yonder credit card can be found here.

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