Cycling cash through accounts

Degenerate

Not actually a Stoozing question per se, but I figure you guys are the experts on gaming the system for benefit and maybe do similar things yourselves, so...

I've got my eye on the new Halifax Clarity Rewards card. £5 a month just for spending £300 is an unbeatable cashback deal. The catch being you need a Halifax reward current account, but as that pays another £5 a month it's no hardship. £120 a year for free. Of course, they want you to use it as your main bank account, so they specify a minimum monthly deposit of £1000 per month to get the rewards.

I already have a Santander current account and don't want to do anything to jeopardize its status, as I've built up a fairly generous overdraft limit which comes in handy and is not easy to get. There are other account features which I want to keep and a billion DDs which I could do without the hassle of moving. I also have a Nationwide Flexaccount, and have noticed that some of their loan offers are at preferable rates for "main account" customers, again requiring £1000 a month deposits. This seems to be the standard benchmark among most institutions, but fortunately it's also the level most have set for standing orders via faster payments, so it should be possible to whisk a grand around several accounts easily.

My payday is the 20th, most of my DDs come out from the 24th onwards, the couple that don't I can have the dates shifted back. So here's the plan:

20th Pay hits Santander account
21st Faster Payments Standing Order £1000 from Santander to Halifax
22nd Faster Payments Standing Order £1000 from Halifax to Nationwide
23rd Faster Payments Standing Order £1000 from Nationwide back to Santander
24th DDs start from Santander account

As far as I can see this should work, but I'm asking for comments/pitfalls before I set it up. The last thing I need is for the banks to decide I'm money laundering or something.

YorkshireBoy

Faster Payments are not guaranteed, especially with Halifax. Over the last few months it's often taken me several days to complete my 4 x Halifax Reward/ 3 x LTSB Vantage monthly £1K shuffle.

Halifax problems range from the payments defaulting to BACS (although I do have the option to cancel and try again 'tomorrow') to my online banking being suspended for 24/36 hours.

If time is of the essence, ie you don't have a float, then you need to be prepared/maybe have a re-think?

Degenerate

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Faster Payments are not guaranteed, especially with Halifax. Over the last few months it's often taken me several days to complete my 4 x Halifax Reward/ 3 x LTSB Vantage monthly £1K shuffle.

Halifax problems range from the payments defaulting to BACS (although I do have the option to cancel and try again 'tomorrow') to my online banking being suspended for 24/36 hours.

If time is of the essence, or you don't have a float, then you need to be prepared/maybe have a re-think?

I was relying on the overdraft on the Santander account as a float. I'm not usually using it, and it's enough to cover all the DDs in the event of a total balls-up. Of course, that would cost me some interest so it's not something I want to make a habit of.

I've found faster payments to be generally reliable with my Santander and Nationwide accounts, but obviously I've yet to experience the Halifax implementation. Do you think your issues may have been related to trying to make multiple transfers in and out on the same day? I thought that might be an issue, which is why my plan has the grand spending a night in each account and leaving the next day. Can I take it that all your shuffling is done via manual transactions? I suspect a regular standing order may be more reliable, as once it has gone regularly unchallenged it is not likely to be deemed as unusual activity/potential fraud.

The big danger I see with standing orders is if one transfer does screw up for whatever reason, it could trigger a cascade of charges for unauthorised overdraft/unpaid SO from the other accounts as they will normally be empty. The one day wait does give me an opportunity to see this, go online and cancel the SO though.

BTW, how did you get 4 reward accounts?

YorkshireBoy

Degenerate wrote: »

BTW, how did you get 4 reward accounts?

Bagged 3 when they launched (Jan/Feb 2009?), and then cheekily redesignated my existing long held HICA a Reward account late last year.

Also had 3 BoS Reward accounts very briefly (sort code/account number issued), but they quickly closed them.

CannyJock

I do my FP's in two £500 tranches. Works fine same day. Bounce LTSB->HBOS, cycle through my HBOS reward accounts and then HBOS->LTSB all in a few minutes. Repeat with 2nd lot of £500 a few days later.

There's nothing says the £1000 has to be a single transaction the sum of the payments in is what counts