How to fund your next iPhone without spending a penny extra
The highest-earning gift cards in the catalogue, ranked — and exactly how much you'd need.
A new iPhone is £799 on the cheap end, comfortably £1,200 if you want the Pro. On a new contract, that's £30–60/mo for two years — a fixed line item you're either paying or planning to pay.
There's a version of this where you don't pay any of it out of pocket. Buy certain gift cards on A1 Tech Deals, spend them on the brands you were already using, and the store credit that arrives on your account quietly funds the new phone across the upgrade cycle. Which cards, specifically? The ones with the highest cashback rates in the catalogue. Not supermarkets (too low), not the small everyday cards. The big-reward categories — experiences, dining memberships, lifestyle subscriptions — where operators pay out 10–20% back on every purchase.
This is the "if you're going to spend, spend here" guide.
Buy the gift card
Pick any brand and pay as you would for tech. The code is sent straight to your email.
We reward you
A1 Tech Deals credits your account with store credit — funded by us, not the brand.
Spend it on tech
Use the credit at checkout on anything at a1techdeals.com — phones, laptops, accessories.
The math on targeted high-reward spend
That's £245 a year of store credit — more than enough for an iPhone 16 Pro.
The Apple kit waiting at the end
The rates on experience and multi-brand cards are high enough that even a modest £200/mo routed through them covers a meaningful slice of a new phone every year. Stack it with a regular grocery and takeaway habit (see the cost-of-living loop) and the upgrade pays for itself inside 18 months.
Highest-earning cards right now
tastecard - 6 Months
Virgin Experience Days
Buyagift
Experiences by WonderDays UK
Movies By Rakuten
Green Chef
Swarovski
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate UK
Aspinal of London UK
Two phone-funding setups
The experiences gifter
Elena buys £1,000 of Buyagift and Virgin Experience Days cards across the year — for birthdays, anniversaries, and end-of-year family thank-yous.
£150 toward an iPhone upgrade on presents you were buying anyway — roughly one AirPods Pro worth of credit per year of presents.
The targeted everyday stack
Marco commits £100/mo to a Tastecard-style dining membership, £60/mo on Xbox Game Pass / games, £40/mo on Swarovski or Aspinal for presents, plus £300/mo on restaurant cards for dining out.
£823 — the exact price of an iPhone 16 base model. A new phone, every year, funded by spending you were doing anyway.
What people always want to check.
The fastest route to the next iPhone
Highest-reward cards in the catalogue. Credit added to your A1 Tech Deals account automatically.
More from the issue.
Fund your next phone upgrade on the coffees and dinners you'd buy anyway
The Pret, Deliveroo and date-night spend that quietly pays for your next iPhone.
The cost-of-living savings loop — how smart UK shoppers stretch every £
A straightforward way to turn the weekly essentials into real store credit by year's end.
The Christmas gifting hack — buy their presents, reward yourself
December is your single biggest gift-card spend of the year. The loop should too.
