If you earn Velocity points with Virgin Australia, you’ve probably seen the “Points + Payment” option when booking a flight, hotel or rental car. This option allows you to pay partly with your loyalty points and partly using cash to save on your booking.
What is Points + Pay at Virgin Australia?
Points + Pay is a feature of Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer loyalty program. It allows members to use a portion of their points to reduce the price of a ticket paid for with cash, rather than paying entirely with points or entirely with cash. Specifically, every 2,500 points spent via Points + Pay reduces the fare by approximately 15 Australian dollars.
This option applies to several types of purchases:
– The price of a paid airline ticket on any available Virgin Australia flight, even if it is not a Reward Seat.
– An upgrade to Economy X or Business Class.
– Extras such as seat selection, additional baggage or carbon offsets.
– Hotel reservations from among hundreds of thousands of properties worldwide.
– Car rentals.
The minimum number of points required is generally 2,500 for a one-way flight and 5,000 for a round-trip flight, but the cash portion depends on the fare selected.
Points + Pay, reward Seats, or any Seat: What’s the difference?
Virgin Australia offers three distinct ways to use Velocity points for travel, and it’s easy to get them mixed up.
Reward Seats: These are fixed-price seats redeemed with points, with a base fare starting at around 5,900 to 6,200 points for a short-haul flight within Australia. This is the option that Virgin Australia itself promotes as offering the best value for points, but availability is limited.
Any Seat: This option allows you to use your points to reserve any available seat on a Virgin Australia flight.
Points + Pay: This option combines points and cash, whether for an Any Seat ticket or a ticket originally paid for in cash.
In short, Reward Seats are reserved primarily for members seeking the best value for their points, while Points + Pay prioritizes flexibility, even if it means a lower return per point spent.
Not to be confused with “Pay with Points”
Virgin Australia has launched a different feature with a similar name: Pay with Points. This is a way to pay directly on board for food and drinks using Velocity points on select domestic and short-haul international flights. The process is automated: members link their Velocity account to an eligible Visa card, pay as usual on board with that card, and then receive a notification after landing asking if they’d like to convert that purchase into points. The amount is then credited back to the card within a few business days. A minimum of 100 points is required to use this option.
This confusion between “Points + Pay” and “Pay with Points” regularly comes up in online searches, particularly in the form of “Points Plus Pay”—an alternative spelling that’s frequently searched for, even though the brand’s official name uses the “+” symbol.
How to use Points + Pay in practice
On the Virgin Australia website or app, the Points + Pay option appears automatically when booking a flight, provided you’re logged into your Velocity account. Simply select the checkbox or use the slider to adjust the number of points used to reduce the displayed fare, within the limits of your available points balance and the minimum requirement. The same process applies to hotel and car rental bookings which can be accessed through the Velocity rewards section.
Our tips for getting the most out of Points + Pay:
– Prioritize booking Reward Seats whenever they’re available, as they offer a much better value per point.
– Save Points + Pay for situations where no Reward Seats are available on your desired date.
– Pay taxes and ancillary fees with cash rather than points, since they’re converted at the same unfavorable rate as Points + Pay.
– Always compare the value in cents per point before confirming a reservation, especially for hotels and car rentals, where the value per point is often low.
– Don’t confuse Points + Pay, which reduces the price of a ticket, with Pay with Points, which is used solely to pay for in-flight purchases.
How much is a Velocity point worth when redeemed through Points + Pay?
This is where the problem lies. Several Australian points and miles experts, including Point Hacks and Australian Frequent Flyer, agree that Points + Pay offers fairly low value, generally around 0.6 Australian cents per point. By comparison, a Velocity point used for an upgrade or a Business Class Reward Seat can be worth up to 4 cents, and a reasonable target average for good use of points is closer to 1.5 to 2 cents.
In other words, converting 2,500 points into a $15 discount amounts to valuing each point at just over half a cent, which is significantly below what those same points could be worth when redeemed for a Reward Seat or an upgrade. In fact, several specialized guides recommend reserving “Points + Pay” only for situations where there are no other attractive options, for example, when a flight is fully booked for Reward Seats but you absolutely must travel on that date.
There’s also an important caveat: when a reservation combines a Reward Seat and an Any Seat on the same route, the taxes and additional fees paid with points are converted at the same rate of 0.6 cents per point as Points + Pay. Hence the recurring advice from experts: pay taxes and ancillary fees with cash, and save your points for higher-value redemptions.
What travelers and specialized communities are saying
Feedback from travel blogs and communities of points enthusiasts (Point Hacks, AwardWallet, Australian Frequent Flyer, The Point Calculator) all point to the same conclusion. Points + Pay is seen as a handy workaround rather than an optimization strategy. It appeals to members who want to avoid paying the full cash price or who have a points balance they don’t know how to use effectively, but program experts agree that it’s better to save your points for:
– Upgrades to Business Class, often cited as the best possible use of Velocity points.
– Reward Seats on the Virgin Australia network and with international airline partners, particularly on long-haul flights.
– Transfers from banking partners or Flybuys to top up a points balance for a high-value redemption, rather than spending points bit by bit via Points + Pay.
Some guides also compare Points + Pay to redemptions for shopping or gift cards in the Velocity Store, which offer an equally limited value per point, around 0.4 to 0.5 cents. The most common conclusion is that Points + Pay is justified primarily by the convenience and flexibility of booking, not by its cost-effectiveness.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Are “Points + Pay” and “Points Plus Pay” the same thing?
A: Yes, they refer to the same feature. “Points Plus Pay” is simply how many internet users type the phrase, since they can’t easily enter the “+” sign into a search engine.
Q: What is the minimum number of points required to use Points + Pay?