Can You Pay Barclaycard Early?

kingandsoraka

Is it possible to pay off a Barclay card before the statement is out? As a example, my card currently has a £0 balance, if I made a £300 purchase today, would I be able to login tomorrow and pay it off in full or would I have to wait for the statement to be generated?

Superscrooge

You could pay the balance before the statement is generated, but the two negatives of doing this are;

1. You are not taking advantage of the interest free period
2. If there is a zero balance on your credit card every time it is reported to the credit reference agencies, it looks as though your credit card is not being used.

agrinnall

It's also quite likely that your purchase won't be showing on your account for several days, so by making a payment tomorrow you would effectively be pre-loading your card with credit, which is against the T&Cs.

cooltt

kingandsoraka wrote: »

Is it possible to pay off a Barclay card before the statement is out? As a example, my card currently has a £0 balance, if I made a £300 purchase today, would I be able to login tomorrow and pay it off in full or would I have to wait for the statement to be generated?

Please ignore the clowns on the board, there's nothing "negative" about having a zero balance on your credit file (it's called responsibly managing your available credit) or not taking advantage of the interest free period.

You can pay of a balance anytime you want prior to the statement date, I do it all the time with my cards nothing wrong with my file, funny that.
With regards to Barclaycard, by the time the £300 payment is posted the purchase would have been posted too.

adindas

kingandsoraka wrote: »

Is it possible to pay off a Barclay card before the statement is out? As a example, my card currently has a £0 balance, if I made a £300 purchase today, would I be able to login tomorrow and pay it off in full or would I have to wait for the statement to be generated?

Yes, You could do that (see below)
But you will need to make sure that the purchase is already posted to your card account online (it could take more than one day). Otherwise, you are breaking the T&C put your card in credit.

To make sure you will need to check your CC online A/C anytime you do a purchase which means doing work unnecessarily?

Also like other posters have said, doing this you are not taking advantage of the interest-free period of at least one month.

If you just want to make sure you don't miss any payment, just set up a DD. Doing this you have transfer responsibility to those who need to collect it.

BoGoF

cooltt wrote: »

Please ignore the clowns on the board, there's nothing "negative" about having a zero balance on your credit file (it's called responsibly managing your available credit) or not taking advantage of the interest free period.

It might not be a 'negative' but it's certainly not a positive as far as demonstrating to other would be lenders that you can manage credit. If you do as OP suggests then as far as your credit file goes, you are not using the card.

Surely the point of having a CC is to take advantage of such things as interest free periods. If not for you then why not get a prepaid card?

Ben8282

But why do you want to pay off the purchase so quickly? It makes no sense. Why not wait for the statement and pay the statement normally?

IanManc

cooltt wrote: »

Please ignore the clowns on the board,

Insulting other forum contributors with whom you disagree doesn't give your opinion greater weight or authority compared with their opinion - it just makes you look nasty, which I'm sure wasn't your intention.

:beer:

YorkshireBoy

Ben8282 wrote: »

But why do you want to pay off the purchase so quickly?

Very small credit limit, say £500...and another large purchase envisaged soon?

chattychappy

agrinnall wrote: »

It's also quite likely that your purchase won't be showing on your account for several days, so by making a payment tomorrow you would effectively be pre-loading your card with credit, which is against the T&Cs.

I disagree with this analysis. Once you have made your purchase, you owe Barclaycard in respect of your purchase. So you are not putting your account into credit by making payment. It maybe that their system transiently shows the account in credit, but this is not the true position - this is down to posting lag. Once the transaction is posted to the account, the transaction date should show that you sent payment after making the purchase. Typically as soon as you have made a purchase, the transaction becomes "pending" and your available credit is reduced, so I don't think you are at any risk of being accused of breaking T+Cs.

By the way, with my Barclaycard, it never takes "several days" for a purchase to show, usually a couple at most.

agrinnall

chattychappy wrote: »

By the way, with my Barclaycard, it never takes "several days" for a purchase to show, usually a couple at most.

So what happens if the retailer doesn't post the transaction to Barclaycard for days/weeks/months/ever (as has happened with me)? It may never have happened to you but you certainly can't say it never happens (and I'm pretty sure that you'd be well aware of that).