Cancel 123 and go back to MBNA Amex?

matty_art

My annual payment on my Santander 123 is just about to come to an end so I've just been doing some maths.

I have an old MBNA Amex card which offers 1% cashback anywhere (where Amex is accepted!), so I was looking at the amount of cashback over 1% that Santander brings me. Last year it was just about £24 so worth keeping as the possible gains outweighed any losses.

With the increase to £36, it's no longer looking worth it for me. My total cashback last year was £51, and of that £22 was in addition to what I can get already with my MBNA card.

Obviously cancelling this card will mean that if I ever want another one, I'll be hit by the new monthly cap, but given that I don't expect my fuel to change vastly in the near future it still makes sense to cancel to me, as long as my MBNA card isn't going anywhere.

Am I right? Or is there a reasonable risk of the Amex cashback card disappearing any time soon?

phona

I've come to more or less the same conclusion and won't be keeping my 123 card on when I start having to pay the higher charge.

Nobody can say if the AMEX deal will go away soon but you can always open a new 123 account, especially if you won't hit the 3% cashback limit.

I'm shifting the focus of my cards away from cashback and towards stoozing so I'll probably replace my 123 with something at 0% for purchases. I think there's quite a bit more profit in that in the long term.
1% is perfectly reasonable these days though.

Doctor_Duke

Guys - I agree. I cancelled my 123 card and opened and was accepted for a Santander 15 months 0% no fee card on the same day! The limit was lower but a good stoozing option.

20aday

At the moment American Express themselves aren't affected by the EU Interchange Fee cap (I think it's due to be reviewed/revised in 2019 from what I've read) but that *may* only apply to cards issued by themselves (rather than a third party i.e. MBNA).

I was going to suggest keeping the Santander 123 MasterCard if you opened the account prior to September 15th 2015 as your cap on fuel/travel is £9 instead of the current £3 but if your usage isn't going to change I'd opt for the American Express myself.