Earning Rewards
The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard®* earns rewards at the following rates:
- 3 points per dollar on Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages purchases
- 2 points per dollar on dining, groceries, select streaming services and electric vehicle charging
- 1 point per dollar on all other eligible purchases
The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard®* also earns 40,000 Virgin Points after spending $3,000 on your card in the first 90 days.
Redeeming Rewards
Virgin Red is the umbrella under which all Virgin assets live, including Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Voyages, Virgin Hotels and Virgin Limited Edition. You can redeem Virgin Points with any of these brands—as well as various partners that aren’t Virgin-branded.
When redeeming for travel, our searches find that you can typically receive a value above 1 cent each. For example, you can book Virgin Atlantic flights to Europe for as little as 10,000 points and $152. This flight otherwise costs more than $480, giving you a value of 3.2 cents per point.
You may notice the absurdly high taxes and fees for fancier seats like Premium and Upper Class. While the points price is low, you may not be keen to drop over $1,000 on an award flight.
Fortunately, you can also use Virgin Points to book other airlines through the Virgin Atlantic website, such as Air France, KLM, Delta, ANA and El Al. In many cases, you’ll pay considerably more points for a business class flight—but you’ll save hundreds of dollars in taxes and fees.
Below is a nonstop flight from Dallas (DFW) to Paris (CDG) on Air France. For 87,500 points and $158 in taxes, you can book a seat that costs $3,198. That amounts to a value of 3.4 cents per point.
The value per point when redeemed with Virgin Hotels and Virgin Voyages is fair—often above 1 cent per point. It’s also worth noting that Virgin occasionally publishes promotions that vastly discount the amount of points you need for specific redemptions, which improves your value per point.
Perhaps the most interesting redemption prospect outside of airfare via the Virgin Atlantic site is Virgin Limited Edition properties. These are a handful of hyper-aspirational hotels and resorts around Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.
For example, Mahali Mzuri is located in Maasai Mara, one of the world’s most popular safari sites. Tents cost $2,200 per night—but you can book two nights for 320,000 points, giving you a fair value of 1.3 cents per point.
When redeeming for other things, you’ll often get subpar value at around 0.5 cents per point. As an example, a $50 Virgin Experiences e-gift card costs 10,000 points—as does a $50 Eurostar voucher.
Rewards Potential
Forbes Advisor uses data from various government agencies to determine both baseline income and spending averages across various categories. The 70th percentile of wage earners brings in $118,438 annually and can reasonably spend $39,337 on a credit card. We base our sample household spending on that number.
The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard®* Rewards Potential
It’s also worth noting that The Virgin Red Rewards Mastercard®* will award 5,000 Virgin Points after every card member anniversary. Factoring this bonus into your annual earnings, you can expect to receive around 58,421 Virgin Points per year.