new halifax switch offer (£175) from 14 march 2023

adindas

notquiteskint said:

danny13579 said:

notquiteskint said:

If i decide to run this account is a £500 per month transfer to soneone else classed as a spend on your debit card to get the £5 monthly reward?

Yes, or to yourself.

So i could login to online banking send £1500 from my current halifax account to my reward account this would cover the account fee £3 criteria and also the £500 spend criteria to qualify for the £5 reward? then send the cash back to my normal current account the same day.

There are two things here in reward Account

£3 waiver for your Reward account could be done by monthly funding of £1500 in and out each month. If you have a few of them You could just permutate £1500 among them.

The Reward Account also come with what is so called Reward extras which you can choose to receive £5 (or you can select one lifestyle benefit). one way to meet reward extra is to spend £500 using the debit card payment.

WillPS

pecunianonolet said:

The ignorance of some people not accepting what they say is factually incorrect is astounding.

A transfer is a movement of cash from one account to another, usually fee free for sender and receiver (Transaction cost to maintain the service such as keeping and maintain the digital infrastructure applies)

A debit card spend transaction is usually free for the one initiating it (the debit card owner) but the receiver of the cash is having to pay a service fee for the ability of taking money from the account authorised by the debit card owner.

So the direct debit spend requirement is there because retailers, shops, etc. who let you pay by this method pay fees to Halifax. So if we assume a fee of 5% it means Halifax cashes in £25 out the £500 requirement and keeps the £20. (Precisely speaking there are tax implications as it is a bonus and therefore what we get paid is £5 net but Halifax settles a £1.25 / 20% tax on it directly to HMRC so payment is £6.25 gross. So if you are a higher rate tax payer and file a self assessment this technically needs to be reported as income and you would have to pay the additional few pennies on it). if you earn below the free allowance you can claim it back from HMRC Source

To satisfy the direct debit spend requirement you can use various ways. Some building societies allow you to top up a savings account this way e.g. YBS or I believe Skipton but they don't like abuse of this feature and might decide to send you a warning or make you an unwanted customer and terminate your account. Another solution is Paypal Friends & Family payments and that's what I will be using as they don't seem to care and I made thousands of £0.01 payments to fill up Natwest and RBS reg savers in a few weeks. Sending £500 from my account to the OH and returned back to me. Since you can have up to 3 reward accounts per person, makes it 3 monthly transactions for each of us per month for £30 bonus each month for a year totalling in £360 bonus on top of the switch bonus. 

The Paypal solution works fine with TSB as well, just that they have a 20 transaction requirement (20 debit card spend payments, which means I transfer the record sum of £0.20 with 20 x 0.01) and Halifax has a value requirement. No issues to receive the £5 with TSB every month on 2 current Spend & Save accounts. 

Utter nonsense. The interchange fee on UK debit cards (when used in the UK) is regulated at a maximum of 0.2%. That is the entirety of the revenue for both Halifax and Visa, £1 for £500 of spend! Whatever else the merchant pays their acquiring bank is not getting to Halifax. The only possible way they are making more from that debit card being used than the cost of the £5 notes they give out is if the user spends abroad, or spends at least £2500 (but probably more like £4000) in the UK.

The £5 reward payment is not taxable and hasn't been since the scheme was changed in 2020. (It was previously 'interest' rather than 'cashback' as now.)

PayPal have been known to shut account of obvious mickey takers, I wouldn't recommend doing thousands of transactions.

pecunianonolet

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

The ignorance of some people not accepting what they say is factually incorrect is astounding.

A transfer is a movement of cash from one account to another, usually fee free for sender and receiver (Transaction cost to maintain the service such as keeping and maintain the digital infrastructure applies)

A debit card spend transaction is usually free for the one initiating it (the debit card owner) but the receiver of the cash is having to pay a service fee for the ability of taking money from the account authorised by the debit card owner.

So the direct debit spend requirement is there because retailers, shops, etc. who let you pay by this method pay fees to Halifax. So if we assume a fee of 5% it means Halifax cashes in £25 out the £500 requirement and keeps the £20. (Precisely speaking there are tax implications as it is a bonus and therefore what we get paid is £5 net but Halifax settles a £1.25 / 20% tax on it directly to HMRC so payment is £6.25 gross. So if you are a higher rate tax payer and file a self assessment this technically needs to be reported as income and you would have to pay the additional few pennies on it). if you earn below the free allowance you can claim it back from HMRC Source

To satisfy the direct debit spend requirement you can use various ways. Some building societies allow you to top up a savings account this way e.g. YBS or I believe Skipton but they don't like abuse of this feature and might decide to send you a warning or make you an unwanted customer and terminate your account. Another solution is Paypal Friends & Family payments and that's what I will be using as they don't seem to care and I made thousands of £0.01 payments to fill up Natwest and RBS reg savers in a few weeks. Sending £500 from my account to the OH and returned back to me. Since you can have up to 3 reward accounts per person, makes it 3 monthly transactions for each of us per month for £30 bonus each month for a year totalling in £360 bonus on top of the switch bonus. 

The Paypal solution works fine with TSB as well, just that they have a 20 transaction requirement (20 debit card spend payments, which means I transfer the record sum of £0.20 with 20 x 0.01) and Halifax has a value requirement. No issues to receive the £5 with TSB every month on 2 current Spend & Save accounts. 

Utter nonsense. The interchange fee on UK debit cards (when used in the UK) is regulated at a maximum of 0.2%. That is the entirety of the revenue for both Halifax and Visa, £1 for £500 of spend! Whatever else the merchant pays their acquiring bank is not getting to Halifax. The only possible way they are making more from that debit card being used than the cost of the £5 notes they give out is if the user spends abroad, or spends at least £2500 (but probably more like £4000) in the UK.

The £5 reward payment is not taxable and hasn't been since the scheme was changed in 2020. (It was previously 'interest' rather than 'cashback' as now.)

PayPal have been known to shut account of obvious mickey takers, I wouldn't recommend doing thousands of transactions.

Relax, the above was only meant to be an example for easy calculation and in no way would fees be that high, maybe I should have used 10% to make it dummy proof. Anyhow, thanks for clarification on the actual rate.

On the tax part, maybe take it up with the authors of Which?Money or even better, with HMRC directly! Looks like HMRC talks, in your words, "utter nonsense" here

On Paypal, I have been a member with Paypal for many years, might even be a decade. I receive regular normal payments in various currencies (GBP, EUR, USD) and never had any issue, block, checks or anything. Doing 198 x £0.01 payments daily for many weeks hasn't had any impact and Paypal is operating normal as always. There are reports of people of everything e.g. people being scammed or people having their Paypal accounts blocked. Reviews of incidents for the few are not applicable for the masses. Your warning is valid but in most cases nothing will happen I believe.

WillPS

pecunianonolet said:

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

The ignorance of some people not accepting what they say is factually incorrect is astounding.

A transfer is a movement of cash from one account to another, usually fee free for sender and receiver (Transaction cost to maintain the service such as keeping and maintain the digital infrastructure applies)

A debit card spend transaction is usually free for the one initiating it (the debit card owner) but the receiver of the cash is having to pay a service fee for the ability of taking money from the account authorised by the debit card owner.

So the direct debit spend requirement is there because retailers, shops, etc. who let you pay by this method pay fees to Halifax. So if we assume a fee of 5% it means Halifax cashes in £25 out the £500 requirement and keeps the £20. (Precisely speaking there are tax implications as it is a bonus and therefore what we get paid is £5 net but Halifax settles a £1.25 / 20% tax on it directly to HMRC so payment is £6.25 gross. So if you are a higher rate tax payer and file a self assessment this technically needs to be reported as income and you would have to pay the additional few pennies on it). if you earn below the free allowance you can claim it back from HMRC Source

To satisfy the direct debit spend requirement you can use various ways. Some building societies allow you to top up a savings account this way e.g. YBS or I believe Skipton but they don't like abuse of this feature and might decide to send you a warning or make you an unwanted customer and terminate your account. Another solution is Paypal Friends & Family payments and that's what I will be using as they don't seem to care and I made thousands of £0.01 payments to fill up Natwest and RBS reg savers in a few weeks. Sending £500 from my account to the OH and returned back to me. Since you can have up to 3 reward accounts per person, makes it 3 monthly transactions for each of us per month for £30 bonus each month for a year totalling in £360 bonus on top of the switch bonus. 

The Paypal solution works fine with TSB as well, just that they have a 20 transaction requirement (20 debit card spend payments, which means I transfer the record sum of £0.20 with 20 x 0.01) and Halifax has a value requirement. No issues to receive the £5 with TSB every month on 2 current Spend & Save accounts. 

Utter nonsense. The interchange fee on UK debit cards (when used in the UK) is regulated at a maximum of 0.2%. That is the entirety of the revenue for both Halifax and Visa, £1 for £500 of spend! Whatever else the merchant pays their acquiring bank is not getting to Halifax. The only possible way they are making more from that debit card being used than the cost of the £5 notes they give out is if the user spends abroad, or spends at least £2500 (but probably more like £4000) in the UK.

The £5 reward payment is not taxable and hasn't been since the scheme was changed in 2020. (It was previously 'interest' rather than 'cashback' as now.)

PayPal have been known to shut account of obvious mickey takers, I wouldn't recommend doing thousands of transactions.

Relax, the above was only meant to be an example for easy calculation and in no way would fees be that high, maybe I should have used 10% to make it dummy proof. Anyhow, thanks for clarification on the actual rate.

On the tax part, maybe take it up with the authors of Which?Money or even better, with HMRC directly! Looks like HMRC talks, in your words, "utter nonsense" here

On Paypal, I have been a member with Paypal for many years, might even be a decade. I receive regular normal payments in various currencies (GBP, EUR, USD) and never had any issue, block, checks or anything. Doing 198 x £0.01 payments daily for many weeks hasn't had any impact and Paypal is operating normal as always. There are reports of people of everything e.g. people being scammed or people having their Paypal accounts blocked. Reviews of incidents for the few are not applicable for the masses. Your warning is valid but in most cases nothing will happen I believe.

Regardless of the numbers your inference was that Halifax earns (significantly) more than the £5 reward payment. I'm glad you accept now that was misleading.

Read the link you've sent, and you'll see buried in amongst a thread about referral fees (not rewards/cashback!), there is a link to another page which confirms I'm right (see Customer rewards and ‘cashback’ toward the bottom).

See this archive page from May 2020 - note the qualifier on the 'More about the £2 reward'. Compare that to the '£5 cash' qualifier on the equivalent page from a year later.

If you don't care about an ongoing relationship with PayPal, I agree it does not matter if you take the mickey with them.

pecunianonolet

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

The ignorance of some people not accepting what they say is factually incorrect is astounding.

A transfer is a movement of cash from one account to another, usually fee free for sender and receiver (Transaction cost to maintain the service such as keeping and maintain the digital infrastructure applies)

A debit card spend transaction is usually free for the one initiating it (the debit card owner) but the receiver of the cash is having to pay a service fee for the ability of taking money from the account authorised by the debit card owner.

So the direct debit spend requirement is there because retailers, shops, etc. who let you pay by this method pay fees to Halifax. So if we assume a fee of 5% it means Halifax cashes in £25 out the £500 requirement and keeps the £20. (Precisely speaking there are tax implications as it is a bonus and therefore what we get paid is £5 net but Halifax settles a £1.25 / 20% tax on it directly to HMRC so payment is £6.25 gross. So if you are a higher rate tax payer and file a self assessment this technically needs to be reported as income and you would have to pay the additional few pennies on it). if you earn below the free allowance you can claim it back from HMRC Source

To satisfy the direct debit spend requirement you can use various ways. Some building societies allow you to top up a savings account this way e.g. YBS or I believe Skipton but they don't like abuse of this feature and might decide to send you a warning or make you an unwanted customer and terminate your account. Another solution is Paypal Friends & Family payments and that's what I will be using as they don't seem to care and I made thousands of £0.01 payments to fill up Natwest and RBS reg savers in a few weeks. Sending £500 from my account to the OH and returned back to me. Since you can have up to 3 reward accounts per person, makes it 3 monthly transactions for each of us per month for £30 bonus each month for a year totalling in £360 bonus on top of the switch bonus. 

The Paypal solution works fine with TSB as well, just that they have a 20 transaction requirement (20 debit card spend payments, which means I transfer the record sum of £0.20 with 20 x 0.01) and Halifax has a value requirement. No issues to receive the £5 with TSB every month on 2 current Spend & Save accounts. 

Utter nonsense. The interchange fee on UK debit cards (when used in the UK) is regulated at a maximum of 0.2%. That is the entirety of the revenue for both Halifax and Visa, £1 for £500 of spend! Whatever else the merchant pays their acquiring bank is not getting to Halifax. The only possible way they are making more from that debit card being used than the cost of the £5 notes they give out is if the user spends abroad, or spends at least £2500 (but probably more like £4000) in the UK.

The £5 reward payment is not taxable and hasn't been since the scheme was changed in 2020. (It was previously 'interest' rather than 'cashback' as now.)

PayPal have been known to shut account of obvious mickey takers, I wouldn't recommend doing thousands of transactions.

Relax, the above was only meant to be an example for easy calculation and in no way would fees be that high, maybe I should have used 10% to make it dummy proof. Anyhow, thanks for clarification on the actual rate.

On the tax part, maybe take it up with the authors of Which?Money or even better, with HMRC directly! Looks like HMRC talks, in your words, "utter nonsense" here

On Paypal, I have been a member with Paypal for many years, might even be a decade. I receive regular normal payments in various currencies (GBP, EUR, USD) and never had any issue, block, checks or anything. Doing 198 x £0.01 payments daily for many weeks hasn't had any impact and Paypal is operating normal as always. There are reports of people of everything e.g. people being scammed or people having their Paypal accounts blocked. Reviews of incidents for the few are not applicable for the masses. Your warning is valid but in most cases nothing will happen I believe.

Regardless of the numbers your inference was that Halifax earns (significantly) more than the £5 reward payment. I'm glad you accept now that was misleading.

Read the link you've sent, and you'll see buried in amongst a thread about referral fees (not rewards/cashback!), there is a link to another page which confirms I'm right (see Customer rewards and ‘cashback’ toward the bottom).

See this archive page from May 2020 - note the qualifier on the 'More about the £2 reward'. Compare that to the '£5 cash' qualifier on the equivalent page from a year later.

If you don't care about an ongoing relationship with PayPal, I agree it does not matter if you take the mickey with them.

I have not been misleading, I have been given an illustrative example. I even said "if we assume a fee of 5%" and that should make it clear that I made a simple assumption not claimed it to be true or a fact. You would have a point if I would have said "a fee of 5% is charged" and made it sound like this is reality. 

Paypal, do what you like, I have no problems, never had and I'm sure won't have in the future and I'm happy to take whatever risk as I deem it as minimal.

On the tax part, you should stop misleading people as your claims are incorrect. An incentive, such as a switch bonus is not taxable as it is a one off incentive. A regular reward, however, is taxable as it is treated as an annual payment. Even MSE confirmed that here

Further confirmed here or here, here or with Coop bank here

WillPS

pecunianonolet said:

here 

That's for interest - Halifax Reward pays no interest.

pecunianonolet said:

or here

Dated 2019, the Halifax Reward scheme changed in 2020/21 as I've already pointed out.

pecunianonolet said:

Even MSE confirmed that here

Dated 2016, again before the reward scheme changed to no longer pay taxable "rewards" but instead "cashback".

pecunianonolet said:

or with Coop bank here

Once again, not relevant to Halifax Reward which no longer pays taxable "rewards", unlike the Co-op Bank.

EDIT: - in fairness, if you opt for the reward based on maintaining a £5000 balance, which I keep forgetting is an option because it's such a bad deal, you do have to pay tax on it in that instance as it's related to account balance.

pecunianonolet

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

here 

That's for interest - Halifax Reward pays no interest.

pecunianonolet said:

or here

Dated 2019, the Halifax Reward scheme changed in 2020/21 as I've already pointed out.

pecunianonolet said:

 here

Dated 2016, again before the reward scheme changed to no longer pay "interest" but instead "cashback".

pecunianonolet said:

or with Coop bank here

Once again, not relevant to Halifax Reward which no longer pays "interest", unlike the Co-op Bank.

Ok, stay in your bubble and maybe start to learn the difference beween cashback and rewards. Cashback is indeed tax free, rewards are treated differently. Would further recommend some reading of the T&C's but as it is of interest to others:

WillPS

pecunianonolet said:

WillPS said:

pecunianonolet said:

here 

That's for interest - Halifax Reward pays no interest.

pecunianonolet said:

or here

Dated 2019, the Halifax Reward scheme changed in 2020/21 as I've already pointed out.

pecunianonolet said:

 here

Dated 2016, again before the reward scheme changed to no longer pay "interest" but instead "cashback".

pecunianonolet said:

or with Coop bank here

Once again, not relevant to Halifax Reward which no longer pays "interest", unlike the Co-op Bank.

Ok, stay in your bubble and maybe start to learn the difference beween cashback and rewards. Cashback is indeed tax free, rewards are treated differently. Would further recommend some reading of the T&C's but as it is of interest to others:

Nobody is talking about the '£5 for £5,000' (saved) offer though.

You certainly weren't when you were doing 'easy numbers' assertions that suggested Halifax would make £25 on the £500 spend, which is totally irrelevant to the £5 for £5000 offer.

notquiteskint

TheElectricCow said:

The £500 spend must be a debit card transaction - any transfers, Halifax CC payments, cash withdrawals, or direct debits will not count towards this.

Naturally if you’re able to pay into a separate account you have elsewhere using your card this would count towards the requirement as it is a debit card transaction not a transfer between accounts.

Thanks for this reply, all i needed to know.

overspender22

£175 received - switch completes 23rd