Halifax Clarity for hols but LOW limit, could arrange BACS in advance?

cynic

1) I have read the many posts about pre-loading Halifax Clarity NOT being permitted by T&Cs, plus understand some people have had card frozen while abroad if they have been caught obviously pre-loading.

2) Incidentally an actual Branch Manager at a local Halifax says he pre-loads for foreign travel all the time. (to be fair he also pointed out he is active user of card in this country so possible a pre-load might be seen as a small payment timing error ..or maybe he's just been lucky!)

3) I have applied for card before our hols but they have only given a stingy £800 limit (don't ask). We also happy to take some cash (ICE London - nice rate). However we are travelling for two weeks (italy, special trip!), our hotel bills for first week will be ~£750...leaving us with a paltry £50 credit for second week
So my question is this...could I arrange a dated BACS for say £750 to go from account here to Clarity account say 7days after the start of our holiday..would it work?.
Might there be some timing issues with when exactly any spending amount shows up on our bill vs the date of the BACS ( i think sometimes foreign spends take a few days to show up, espec if weekend? Anyone?)
Arguably...one cld set up several smaller payments to occur in a staggered fashion...e.g. £250 to occur on day 8, £250 to occur on day 10...etc just to keep card away from hitting that £800 limit and thus useful.
(We have a very good idea of our overall spending plans)

4) does anyone know a secure, quick & cheap way of checking credit balance while abroad?

5) Appreciate I probly not the first person who has asked this, but cannot find this exact Q elsewhere.

TVM for any thots & advice

Plxply

You can arrange a payment to go out on a certain date, it will normally take 3 working days though to credit the card account. When you pay for things through the Visa/MasterCard networks they can take a few days to be charged however it's up to the merchant when they collect the money. You should be able to login to your account just fine as you do in the UK, just ensure that the HTTPS is displayed and the padlock.

To be honest what I assume will happen is Halifax will bounce the payment back to your current account. It would be seen as a good will gesture by some as a £250 overpayment would obviously be an error if you were paying a £25 credit card statement for example. I can see this going wrong especially if you do it multiple days in a row.

Wouldn't it be easier to get a Metro Bank or N&P account instead?

cynic

Thx for the reply!!

Part of what I am asking is are you permitted to pay off a credit card in clips at any point in time, or do you have to wait for statement? I think you can pay-off any outstanding balance with any amount of cash at any point in time. Indeed Clarity T&C say in 2. Payments..."You can always pay more, and have the right to repay all or part of the credit early at any time"

However - agree your point about merchants - this is THE issue - I cannot be certain in advance when exactly any hotel bills will actually hit the credit card account (won't always be 3days) so it may be quite hard to time any discrete BAC payments in advance so that they do not accidentally move the account into a dreaded positive balance.
(obviously I cld dribble payments in say £100 a day and hope that law of averages keeps me on safe side but it's still not without risk)

So if I cld check card balance and then actually instruct a BACS from abroad, this wld be fine, but sounds like a pain!

Re security - Https & padlock of course but also the wifi networks/hotel computers I may be using may not themselves be secure
(Also I think I read somewhere some internet banking accounts have security set-up so that you actively cannot use them from abroad...I guess I cld check this)

guesswho2000

You can pay at any time, incidentally they seem to accept Faster Payments - whenever I've paid mine the available credit has increased within an hour or so, although the amount doesn't appear as credited until the next day.

The most secure way of dealing with your online banking abroad is via your mobile phone if possible, not via Wifi but via the phone's data network. There is obviously a cost to this though. Using your own phone/laptop/tablet on your hotel's WiFi network is likely to be safe though, but I wouldn't want to use a shared computer at all.

cautiousjon

I would personally look for wifi and use a personal laptop. However, Halifax has an international telephone number for people who need to speak to them about their credit cards when they are abroad. I have been assured that you can ask for a chargeback and Halifax will accept it.

01 for international operator
Ask for reverse charge to: 00442920446001

inmypocketnottheirs

Not forgetting that many hotels will do a preauthorisation for any extras that will affect the available credit. So although your bill may be £750 there could be a preauthorisation for an extra couple if hundred quid.

Or worse than that, the hotel may put the preauthorisation through on arrival and then at the end of he stay attempt to take the full amount resulting in insufficient funds to complete the transactions.

Preauhthorisations can take anything from 7 to 28 days to drop of your account, so you will need to plan this in advance.

whenIretire

Not sure if it would be of use to you, but if you were thinking of pre loading your credit card have you had a look at the proper preloaded cards that are available like the fairfx card? You can use it for purchases and to withdraw cash. Think you can find out about them in the MSEs travelmoneymax link on the right under Cheap Travel Money.

cynic

Thanks very much for the responses.

Overall very annoying to be given such a low credit limit, my real other credit card has large multi-thousand limit so things like pre-authorisation are fine (e.g. alos realise car hire pre authorisation can be very big)

Will check out Metro as am London-based

The pre-loaded cash cards like FairFX looked great (nice and secure and easy, no ATM charges, no spending charges) but IMHO they have two snags:
(i) you have to take the exchange rate offered on the card...not terrible with FairFX but still generally at least 1.5% from true mid...so in effect you are paying an Exchange Loading...in fact the post office card is about 3% from mid if you load online but you get even worse rate if you walk-up
(iii) you need to be happy to pre-load the cards (as you a pay premium to unload it)