bank account direct debit needs

PRAISETHESUN

@OP

The requirement to keep a 123 account open is two "active" DDs - these are are generally ones that could be called upon to pay out and would successfully do so and have paid out at least once in the last 13 months. These can be anything and are not restricted to the types that pay cashback (ie. you could have DDs coming out that receive no cashback, but you would still have to pay the monthly fee).

I also concur with the sentiment of monthly vs annual DDs for cashback - it doesn't matter how it's done as over a 12 month period the cashback will be the same since it is a fixed percentage of the bill's value.