Halifax Clarity reward contactless credit card

GFA

Gizmo247 wrote: »

I have a new account Halifax Clarity credit card from about 6 months ago (5253 03) and when I contacted Halifax regarding swapping for a contactless card, as shown on all their literature, I was told they don't do them.

That's strange - I have a card (5253 03) which has the contactless symbol on it! (Have to admit, I haven't tried to make a contactless payment on it yet!)

BlondBoy

Don't know if this helps any, but recently (end Aug) got my first Clarity card.

Starts with 5253 03. I live in London. Contactless, and didn't have to ask for it.

glider3560

Has anyone attempted to re-apply for the card?

I can't do it online as I already have a card. Wonder if anyone has had success over the phone? It would also be nice to shed the 21.9% interest rate now I have a higher income than when I applied as a student.

Mikhail

We were talking about technological features! Read carefully!

Amex is going to drop the FX fees In the States they already did.

Heng_Leng wrote: »

MBNA and Amex don't provide free forex transactions AFAIK so are not really comparable.

If you hate 'Hellifax' so much, dump them and pay 2.75 - 2.99% loading for all those bells and whistles.

gt94sss2

The bottom of this article says where various banks are in rolling out contactless cards:

Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, which has around 22 million current account customers, have so far sent out around 4.6m contactless cards – suggesting only around a quarter of customers can use one. As cards are renewed, they will be replaced with contactless.

But its more centred on current accounts and not credit cards..

Regards
Sunil

bonjan

glider3560 wrote: »

Has anyone attempted to re-apply for the card?
I can't do it online as I already have a card.

You can't do it over the phone or in branch either.
Although some Halifax customers have more than one Halifax CC due to historical reasons, Halifax don't allow you to apply for a Halifax CC if you already have one; certainly not for the same CC that you already have.
Your application will be rejected (not sure if before or after searching your credit history, I haven't tried and I won't).

I've been discussing this over the phone with Halifax multiple times, I even filed a complaint with them and they called me back just to confirm that indeed my Clarity card beginning with 5286 83 can not be re-issued as a contactless card and that I need to close the current Clarity card and then re-apply for a new one one month after the existing account is closed. :mad:

To add to that my card just expired and the replacement card I got is not contactless indeed.

Really frustrating and interesting way of rewarding loyalty for those of us that have had the Clarity card for a while...

I assume that they'll eventually have to get rid of the old system at which point they might replace the card for those of us that sill have the "old" one (5286 83), but that might be years from now.
As of now, 2014 and no contactless Clarity cards for the lucky ones whose card number begins with 5286 83.

Mikhail wrote: »

Amex is going to drop the FX fees In the States they already did.

I've noticed the change in the US gold card indeed and it'd be awesome if they follow up with the UK gold cards too.
That said I don't expect them to drop the cash withdrawal fee so I still want my Clarity account for that and for the monthly £5 that you get if you also have a Rewards current account with them.

bonjan

My main motivation for having a contactless Clarity card is that, now that the Amazon card has closed, I wanted to make the Clarity card my main non-Amex card.
That said a non-contactless card can not be my main non-Amex card, since I do plenty of contactless payments every month which would add up towards the £300 monthly spend required to trigger the £5 reward (if you have a Rewards current account), but without those I might not make it.

System

YOU were talking about technological facilities provided by the card issuer. Unlocking cards via the net etc aren't really high on my priority list.

What card issuers do in one market - doesn't always happen in another. US issued Capital One cards are forex loading free but only selected UK issued Capital One cards are.

Is there any evidence that Amex are dropping forex fees in the UK?

Mikhail wrote: »

We were talking about technological features! Read carefully!

Amex is going to drop the FX fees In the States they already did.

bonjan

Heng_Leng wrote: »

Is there any evidence that Amex are dropping forex fees in the UK?

As far as I know no evidence, just hoping that they do that in UK too, although US gold cards have been free of forex fees for a while already while UK gold cards still levy the 3% fee (which offsets any rewards you might earn, even at 2X points for foreign spending).

Mikhail, any evidence of Amex dropping forex fees or just hoping they do?

glider3560

bonjan wrote: »

I assume that they'll eventually have to get rid of the old system at which point they might replace the card for those of us that sill have the "old" one (5286 83), but that might be years from now.
As of now, 2014 and no contactless Clarity cards for the lucky ones whose card number begins with 5286 83.

I was previously told it was because the old cards (5286 83) were on a HBOS computer system and the new cards on a Lloyds system. The HBOS cards got moved over to a Lloyds system over six months ago, so I was expecting contactless cards around the same time. Sadly this never happened and I don't expect the computer system to retired anytime in the near future.