Halifax Visa Debit card - cheque guarantee?

Extant

Yes, they used to but have not done so in many years: long enough that it's not as though this could just be an old card that still featured it. I'd bet it to be a misprint and wouldn't try to use it - and I'd also like to see it, since it wouldn't fit in with the rest of the card design.

As it goes, back in the days before accounts for under 18s and all that sort of thing, your Barclays Branch Manager would have to authorize you to have a BarclayCard with no credit limit just so you could have the cheque guarantee feature - even if you were 16. It was considered unacceptable for a bank employee to not have a proper bank account with a cheque guarantee card.

If you ever misused it or went overdrawn, it was a disciplinary or sacking for you.

Oh, those were the days...

savagej

Barclaycard only a few months ago re-newed my friends Platinum Card, it is a £100 CG card. I have not seen a Platinum card yet that is not, the other cards are not such a classic etc. It is on the back and fits in perfectly.

Extant

savagej wrote: »

Barclaycard only a few months ago re-newed my friends Platinum Card, it is a £100 CG card. I have not seen a Platinum card yet that is not, the other cards are not such a classic etc. It is on the back and fits in perfectly.

Neither mine nor my partner's Platinum Barclaycards have cheque guarantees on the reverse - and my account has been open for years and years. I'll take a picture as evidence later.

System

I think that they have stopped issuing them to new customers. If you got the CG facility when it was first issued, then when you card gets renewed, the GC facility would be renewed even if this is no longer the case for new customers. Some standard Barclaycard Visa have a £50 GC logo, along similar lines.

This is also the case for Lloyds TSB. The TSB Trustcard (Credit Card) cards often have a cheque guarantee logo even though LTSB don't normally do - the cards had that facility with TSB before before Lloyds & TSB merged.

dizziblonde

I recently got my beloved Visa Debit card back again after Halifax shoved me onto an Electron card for a few years (my earnings are pretty irregular and I got myself into a financial mess by my ex raiding my account repatedly) and mine doesn't have a cheque guarantee hologram on it anymore. Might be worth looking at when the ones that do/don't were issued as mine's a fairly new card and cheques are pretty much as good as dead now so perhaps they don't see the need to issue them anymore?
(I'll freely admit my credit score is probably still a bit dicey though!)

PROLIANT

The fact of having a C/G function is not to be able to use the cheques these day's more to strengthen your credit rating, to hold a 3 in 1 card does wonders for your credit rating as lenders see you as trusted and responsible.

savagej

The cheque guarantee scheme is definitely being wound down, it is part of something called "The National Payment Plan". Cheques themselves are due to go in something like 2013 or is it 2018 on or the other.

Extant

savagej wrote: »

The cheque guarantee scheme is definitely being wound down, it is part of something called "The National Payment Plan". Cheques themselves are due to go in something like 2013 or is it 2018 on or the other.

I pray it is 2013. Even four more years of such a slow, outdated and inadequate system is too long.

BettySpaghetti_2

My halifax debit card is also a cheque guarantee card so can't help on that one, but I have a joint account at Lloyds and noticed that card wasn't a cheque guarantee card so went in to ask why not and whether I could have one (I only write the occasional one, for bills rather than purchases but wanted one just in case!). The assistant in the bank told me that cheque cards are being phased out (as are cheque books) and that you can now write a cheque anyway without a card and shops/retailers are being advised that cheque cards are not being issued - not that many shops take them now anyway. Not sure how true this is.

Inactive

BarclaysManager wrote: »

I pray it is 2013. Even four more years of such a slow, outdated and inadequate system is too long.

You had better have a word with your counterparts at the Building Societies then, many of them still only accept cheques for deposits.;) and whilst much of business have dispensed with accepting cheques, many of them still issue them to repay customers when things go wrong.