Halifax Clarity - can I avoid interest on withdrawls abroad ?

BIGWHEELER

Do you still get the £5.00 cash back if part of the £300 is cash? If so it should pay for any charges

rb10

BIGWHEELER wrote: »

Do you still get the £5.00 cash back if part of the £300 is cash? If so it should pay for any charges

The £300 is on purchases only. Cash advances do not count towards the total.

Party_Animal

I've just got the Halifax card, having used NW allover the world with no problems. I'm going away for 3 1/2 weeks in Jan. I need to pay for most of my accomodation in cash, as its Central America and most of them only accept plastic to secure the booking. Consequently, I'm going to need quite a bit of cash. Can I set up payments before I leave? I understand I can't preload the card, yet if that's the case, how did the OP end up in credit? I guess the statement might come whilst I'm away, so I'll need to arrange something.
I have a laptop but I'm not sure how much access to WIFI I'll have and wasn't sure whether it was worth taking it.

dzug1

If your current account allows you to set up future BACS or faster payments, then yes you could do this. Knowing how much and when might be the problem.

You can legitimately land up in credit if a purchase is refunded to the card

You MIGHT get away with preloading the card - but it's only might, and if it goes wrong it will create far worse problems than it solves.

Phill_555

I see no reason why you cannot pre-load the card. I have one and will be ringing them up soon to enquire whether this is possible. What if I needed to spend more than my credit limit abroad, for instance If they decline I might just setup a payment from my online banking to go to the card to try to get it into credit, as it seems you cannot overpay on Halifax's online system.

I recently went to Dublin and withdrew cash and wanted to pay it off asap when i'd got back. However it took a few days for all the transactions to log on the online screen, obviously all the time i'm being charged interest on the current balance (although admittedly this was a very small amount).

I also have a Barclaycard which often goes into credit (I make regular withdrawals from a poker site onto it), and i've never heard a peep from them saying that this is not acceptable. I will usually just spend on it until it's spent, or go into Barclays and get them to transfer the balance to one of my current accounts there.

atlantis187

Me and the wife both have seperate clarity cards I'm going to try this as an experiment for when I go away to asia in february for a month.

I'm going to pre load £2000 onto her card before we go and just try using that for cash withdrawals when abroad. If they do block the card we will still have my clarity card as backup.

Does anyone know though if it does get blocked they cant hold onto the money can they? I'm thinking might get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again. It will be worth it though to see if it works.

chattychappy

Phill_555 wrote: »

I see no reason why you cannot pre-load the card.

T+Cs usually prohibit it. Regulation makes it complicated for CCs to have it any other way.

That's not to say an advanced payment will always be rejected. Just it might be - and you might end up with a blocked card or other hassles. Not worth it for the interest.

As for accessing internet overseas, I see no distinction between internet in the UK and internet overseas. Just comes down to the security on the PC you are using (and people/CCTV looking over your shoulder etc). I personally only use my own laptop (or office PC) (wherever I am). I would avoid public PCs - though the risk is probably greater for some kinds of transaction than others. (Eg logging into a bank account where you must use a card reader is going to be safer than, say, typing your credit card number into an internet shopping site.) Agree the cost of using public WiFi might be greater than the cash saved by not waiting until you return home. Some UK banking sites do seem to run rather slowly when accessed from overseas. I've found Natwest/Halifax sites a bit slow. Not really a problem unless you start hitting timeouts. Another issue is that some have downtimes during the night which you can hit daytime when in a different time zone.

chattychappy

atlantis187 wrote: »

Does anyone know though if it does get blocked they cant hold onto the money can they? I'm thinking might get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again. It will be worth it though to see if it works.

No they couldn't keep it (assuming it's yours and not the proceeds of crime!). Money laundering regs would allow them to hold on to it for a short time pending investigation.

It would be an interesting experiment, but whatever the outcome it wouldn't necessarily be repeated next time around.

atlantis187

chattychappy wrote: »

No they couldn't keep it (assuming it's yours and not the proceeds of crime!). Money laundering regs would allow them to hold on to it for a short time pending investigation.

It would be an interesting experiment, but whatever the outcome it wouldn't necessarily be repeated next time around.

I'm just going to be transfering the £2k from our joint halifax reward account. So if they not happy with it they can just transfer the money back into the account or send us a cheque out. Atleast we will know one way or another where it is possible to pre load or not.

baby_frogmella

Does anyone know if Halifax credit card accounts accept faster payments? If not, if you make a payment from a Halifax current account does that reach the credit card account the same day?