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Points hacking

Earning flight points from Coles and Woolworths

Supermarket shopping at Coles and Woolworths converts to airline points: Everyday Rewards to Qantas Frequent Flyer and Flybuys to Velocity. The fastest earn is buying discounted gift cards during 20x bonus promotions for roughly a 10% return. The page covers earning tactics and compares the two airline programs for Australian travellers.

Alex Laverty Alex Laverty Published

The two big Australian supermarket loyalty programs both feed a frequent flyer scheme. Woolworths' Everyday Rewards converts to Qantas Frequent Flyer; Coles' Flybuys converts to Virgin Australia Velocity. Both convert at the same rate — 2,000 supermarket points become 1,000 airline points — so the fastest way to earn flight points at the checkout is the same on either side: buy discounted gift cards during a 20x bonus-points promotion. This page covers how that works, how the two airline programs differ, and the smaller earn tactics worth setting up once.

The base rate

You earn 1 point per $1 spent, and 2,000 points is worth $10 off a future shop. That sets the floor value of a supermarket point at 0.5 cents. The same 2,000 points auto-convert to 1,000 Qantas or Velocity points once you set your rewards preference, so a raw grocery point is worth about half a cent whichever way you take it. Spending $200 a week on groceries earns roughly 10,000 points a year — about $50, or 5,000 airline points. That is not much on its own, which is why the gift card play matters.

The 20x gift card strategy

Both chains run weekly promotions (usually starting Wednesday) offering 20x points on selected third-party gift cards. Buy a $100 card during a 20x promotion and you earn 2,000 points instead of 100 — worth $10 off groceries, or 1,000 Qantas/Velocity points. That is a 10% return on money you were going to spend anyway.

The trick is to stop paying for large purchases directly. Before buying a TV, an iPhone, Officeworks supplies, or a Webjet flight, check whether a gift card for that retailer is in a 20x promotion. Individual brand cards (Apple, JB Hi-Fi, Uber, Google Play) turn up regularly, and so do multi-store cards — TCN (The Card Network) and Ultimate cards, which are spendable across dozens of retailers including JB Hi-Fi, Officeworks, The Good Guys, and Webjet. A multi-store card lets you pre-buy points-earning credit even when you do not yet know exactly where you'll spend it.

Gift cards do carry risk: they can be lost, and they tie up cash, so buy against real planned spending rather than hoarding stacks of them.

Tracking the deals

The Australian points community publishes the weekly offers before they start, so there is no need to read catalogues:

  • FreePoints (freepoints.com.au) — a dedicated tracker of current and historical Coles and Woolworths points offers.
  • Gift Card Database (gcdb.com.au) — maps which multi-store TCN and Ultimate cards work at which retailers.
  • OzBargain (ozbargain.com.au) — members post the upcoming Wednesday gift card specials each Monday or Tuesday, with discussion in comments.
  • Point Hacks and Flight Hacks run weekly gift-card-offer roundups and program guides.
  • Reddit: r/QantasFrequentFlyer, r/VelocityFrequentFlyer, r/AussieFrugal.

Qantas or Velocity: which to collect

You choose your airline by which supermarket you shop at, so in practice many households run both — a Woolworths account earning Qantas and a Coles account earning Velocity. If you have to pick one, Velocity is the better default in 2026 for most Australian travellers. After Qantas raised Classic Reward prices and carrier charges in August 2025, Velocity points generally stretch further, and Velocity tends to win on cheaper domestic reward seats, faster status earning, and trans-Pacific redemptions.

Qantas still wins in specific cases: it has far wider partner reach (the oneworld alliance), better route coverage into Asia and Europe, and stronger status reciprocity. If most of your travel is long-haul to those regions, Qantas is the stronger collect.

Both programs land in a similar value band for redemptions: roughly 1–2 cents per point on economy, and 2 cents or more on long-haul business and first class, which is where the points work hardest. Avoid cashing points out for gift cards or "points plus pay" — those return only about 0.5–0.7 cents per point, no better than taking the $10 store credit.

Smaller earn tactics

  • Activate boosts weekly. Both the Flybuys and Everyday Rewards apps run personal bonus offers you must manually activate — often "spend $50 a week for 4 weeks for X bonus points." Unactivated offers earn nothing.
  • Play the win-back offers. The algorithms reward disloyalty. Shop one chain consistently and your offers get stingy; go quiet for a few weeks and better "win-back" offers tend to appear. Running an account at each chain and alternating based on who has the better offer keeps both competing for your spend.
  • Do the maths on subscriptions. Everyday Extra ($7/month or $70/year) and Coles Plus Saver ($7/month) both give 10% off one shop a month (capped at $50 off) plus 2x points on every shop. One big monthly pantry restock can cover the fee on the discount alone. Coles Plus ($19/month) adds free delivery for online shoppers.
  • Check insurance and mobile. Woolworths and Coles periodically offer large point bonuses for taking up insurance or mobile plans. Compare the premiums first — the points only matter if the underlying price is competitive.

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