Three lots of points on the same grocery shop

This is the one thing I have written about that people actually act on. Not the big balance, not the Europe trip — this.

The idea is simple enough to explain in a sentence: one grocery shop can earn points in three separate places at once, and the only thing standing between you and that is doing the steps in the right order.

I also want to be straight about something up front, because most people explaining this trick have not updated it: one of the three layers got noticeably worse in May 2026. It still works. It is just not what it was, and you should know that before you build a habit around it.

The order it has to go in

The whole thing lives or dies on sequence. Do it in the wrong order and you get one lot of points instead of three.

1. Buy a Woolworths gift card through Qantas Marketplace. Pay with your rewards card.
2. Wait for the code. It arrives by email, usually quickly.
3. Do your normal shop. Pay with the gift card.
4. Scan your Everyday Rewards card before you pay, as you always would.

That is it. No extra spending, no second trip, one extra step in the week.

Layer one: the card

You are buying the gift card with a travel rewards card, so it earns whatever your card earns per dollar. Nothing special — it is the same earn you would get on any purchase.

The point is that this layer still happens. Most people think routing through a gift card means losing the card points. It does not.

Layer two: the gift card (this is the one that got worse)

Qantas Marketplace sells the Everyday WISH eGift card, and buying it earns Qantas Points directly.

Qantas cut Everyday WISH and Woolworths gift cards from three points per dollar to one, on 1 May 2026. That is a two-thirds reduction in this layer, and it happened quietly.

I can confirm the current rate from my own account rather than from a rate table: my August statement shows a $500 Everyday WISH card earning exactly 500 points.

Cards come in $25, $50, $100, $250 and $500. I buy $500 so I am not repeating the exercise every week — the admin is the real cost of this, not the money.

Layer three: Everyday Rewards

You scan your Everyday Rewards card at the checkout exactly as you normally would. Paying with a gift card does not stop it.

Once your accounts are linked, 2,000 Everyday Rewards points convert to 1,000 Qantas Points, automatically, each time you hit the threshold. You set that up once and never think about it again.

This is the layer that quietly does the most work over a year, and it is the one I would set up first if you only ever do one thing from this article.

What it actually earned me

August, from my own statement rather than an example:

Two things worth noticing. The gift card layer is the smallest of the three — 1,000 points out of 16,464. And the supermarket as a whole beat both of my credit cards combined.

So this is not a trick that transforms your balance in a month. It is a small, repeatable addition to something you were doing anyway, and the compounding is the entire point. Anyone selling it as more than that is selling you something.

The rules that keep this sensible

• Only for spending you were already doing. The moment you buy a gift card to chase points on something you did not need, you have lost more than you earned.
• Do not buy more than you will spend. A gift card balance sitting unused is worse than cash.
• Pay the card off. Interest destroys this arithmetic instantly, and it is not close.
• Check the rate before you buy. It dropped by two thirds in May with no fanfare. It can drop again.

Where else it works

The same structure applies wherever a gift card sits between your card and the retailer. Qantas Marketplace carries a range of them, and the earn rate varies by brand — some are still better than the Woolworths one.

It is worth a look before any large planned purchase. A hardware run, a big appliance, a school uniform shop. The bigger the single spend, the more the extra step is worth.

And if you want the fuller picture of earning without leaning on a card at all, I have written that up separately in how to earn Qantas Points without a credit card — the gift card strategy is one part of it, but the automatic conversions are the part that actually built my balance.

Questions I get asked

Do you do this already, or is the order the bit that was missing? I'd like to know which step people skip.