Why do banks with opening offers (and regularly) like you to use the debit card

WillPS

pridehappy said:

Halifax, Virgin Money, Virgin Atlantic and Tesco Bank all allow debit card payments towards a credit card. Most also recommend it as the best method.

None of them recommend this as "the best method". On the contrary, Halifax make you scroll past a list of Open Banking integrations and Virgin Money warn you in some circumstances that it won't be applied quickly enough and to use a Faster Payment instead.

Pretty much every bank recommends setting up a direct debit, some even insist on it as part of the application.

username

I've never understood why the "bank transfer" option was pushed so much by Amex, but curiously googling one day it sounds like a load of faffing with having to log into your online banking, approve the details etc.

If you pay it off entirely when you get the statement like I do, a payee will have already been savedin the online banking for your bank the first time you pay off the bill anyway. So what exactly is the point of their own "bank transfer" method they are advertising?

WillPS

username said:

I've never understood why the "bank transfer" option was pushed so much by Amex, but curiously googling one day it sounds like a load of faffing with having to log into your online banking, approve the details etc.

If you pay it off entirely when you get the statement like I do, a payee will have already been savedin the online banking for your bank the first time you pay off the bill anyway. So what exactly is the point of their own "bank transfer" method they are advertising?

• If everything is set up on your phone, (Amex app, Bank app) you can get it done with just a few clicks.
• No details to memorise/copy (which is a pain for some banks as they disallow pasting); particularly true if you are setting it up the first time.
• From a UX perspective it's usually better to keep the user in a flow within your application rather than send them off somewhere else to do what you need them to do (pay).
• Open banking implementations can send back a 'result' when the transaction is complete - the merchant can then pick up that token and do an immediate check to see if the payment arrived their side and if so apply the credit. Without open banking, and presuming a bank account with no webhooks built in, you have to check regularly for credits which means the user has to wait for that check to take place.

username

WillPS said:

username said:

I've never understood why the "bank transfer" option was pushed so much by Amex, but curiously googling one day it sounds like a load of faffing with having to log into your online banking, approve the details etc.

If you pay it off entirely when you get the statement like I do, a payee will have already been savedin the online banking for your bank the first time you pay off the bill anyway. So what exactly is the point of their own "bank transfer" method they are advertising?

• If everything is set up on your phone, (Amex app, Bank app) you can get it done with just a few clicks.
• No details to memorise/copy (which is a pain for some banks as they disallow pasting); particularly true if you are setting it up the first time.
• From a UX perspective it's usually better to keep the user in a flow within your application rather than send them off somewhere else to do what you need them to do (pay).
• Open banking implementations can send back a 'result' when the transaction is complete - the merchant can then pick up that token and do an immediate check to see if the payment arrived their side and if so apply the credit. Without open banking, and presuming a bank account with no webhooks built in, you have to check regularly for credits which means the user has to wait for that check to take place.

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to explain it all.

Amex are pretty quick at acknowledging payment anyway within hours. It'll do for me.