New Halifax Reward account. Has anyone figured out a way around £500 spending?

Nebulous2

SwiftSuzie said:

I'm pretty new to the forum and happened on this thread. I don’t know whether to be astonished or in awe of how hard core people are here. I've read every page waiting for someone to say: What? All this rigmarole to slide a fiver a month around the edge of the rules? But nobody has. Even if it's 2 or 3 fivers on different accounts. Fascinating. Is it the money or the satisfaction of getting one over on the system, I wonder? Clearly I have a long way to go on the matter of thrift.

You need to dig deeper if you are new to the forum, if your astonishment meter can cope. A fiver is big money compared with some of the challenges people set themselves. If you look at the savings forum, you'll see the lengths people will go to for several pence or fractions of a pence of interest. I think it's part hobby, part competitive, part compulsion to make every penny count, in differing proportions for different people. 

I'm new to Halifax rewards, I got £175 for switching and have just had my first fiver, which makes it well worth doing for me. I generally spend over £500 a month on my credit card. I've a minimum payment direct debit set up as a fall-back, but I pay it in full with a debit card and the DD isn't taken. I'll use Halifax for that now. Pay money in, log in to my credit card, select Halifax debit card as my payment method and its an easy fiver. 

TheBanker

I think everyone has their own tolerance for what's worth doing. If someone thinks it's worth having dozens of accounts and shuffling money back and forth to maximise their reward and interest, then who am I to argue?

Emily_Joy

Have been using NS&I account to "spend" 500 on Halifax, but suddenly it stopped working. During the weekend sms from NS&I haven't been able to arrive. Earlier during the week I got messages like "we need to verify the payment by sending sms and we are not able to do so. If you changed your number recently please contact the bank".  Well, I haven't changed my number and I was able to make phone calls/receive sms from others...

Anyone with similar experience?

WillPS

Emily_Joy said:

Have been using NS&I account to "spend" 500 on Halifax, but suddenly it stopped working. During the weekend sms from NS&I haven't been able to arrive. Earlier during the week I got messages like "we need to verify the payment by sending sms and we are not able to do so. If you changed your number recently please contact the bank".  Well, I haven't changed my number and I was able to make phone calls/receive sms from others...

Anyone with similar experience?

This is an NS&I issue, nothing to do with Halifax. You'd probably be better off starting or adding to a thread on the savings board.

FWIW I was able to log in just now (haven't logged in for a few months), received two factor text then went through the bizarre 'up to a minute' step called 'securing your device'.