Barclays · Mastercard

Emirates Skywards Premium World Elite Mastercard

$499 annual fee · $30/yr in printed statement credits · 1x on everything else · no foreign transaction fees

Earn rates · how we got this

Category	Rate	Cap
Travel	2x	uncapped
Everything else	1x	uncapped
Flights at Emirates only — anywhere else in this category the card earns its base rate, so it is excluded from every ranking on this site	3x	uncapped

See how it ranks: best travel cards.

Statement credits — $30/yr on paper · how we got this

Credit	Value	How it pays
Global Entry / TSA PreCheck application fee credit	$30/year	once every 4 years

Monthly and quarterly credits expire if unused — that's where most of their printed value quietly disappears.

Non-cash perks

Emirates Skywards Gold tier membership status for the first year (retained from year two by spending $40,000/year)
Priority Pass Select airport lounge membership for the primary card member and authorized users
10,000 anniversary bonus Miles after spending $30,000 within one year of account opening
1 Tier Mile for every 4 Skywards Miles earned (capped at 15,000 Tier Miles per card-cycle year)
25% discount on Buy Miles/Gift Miles purchases
No foreign transaction fees
Miles do not expire while the account is open and in good standing

Does the fee earn out? · how we got this

The $499 fee minus $30 in printed credits leaves $469/yr to earn back through rewards — roughly $19,542 of travel spending at 2x (valuing Emirates Skywards at the same mid-range value the optimizer uses). Whether that clears depends on your actual spending.

Is this $499 fee worth it? See the break-even math →

Check the current offer on the issuer's site → Where a card link will appear once available — no link on this page pays us today.

Who this card is not for

Every point below is a term the issuer prints, read off this card's own row in our database — not an opinion about the card. two things on this card rule out a kind of spender:

Anyone who doesn't spend at Emirates. Its largest printed rate, 3x on flights, pays only at Emirates. Anywhere else it earns its base 1x, so the headline number is a loyalty rate rather than a category rate — which is why no ranking on this site counts it.
Anyone who won't work the statement credits. The $499 fee is argued for by $30 of printed credits, spread across 1 separate credit. Each one only pays if you were going to spend that way anyway; ignore them and the whole $499 has to come back through earn rates instead.