Cash on credit card by mistake

aroominyork

I took the wrong card out of my wallet yesterday and draw cash on my Nationwide credit instead of debit card. I'm stuck with a £3 fee, but is there a way to pay it off to stop the interest ticking up without paying the whole balance six weeks early?

retiredbanker1

Make a manual payment of the amount you withdrew + the fee - let the transaction appear on your statement before doing this (not pending) - this should minimise the damage.

One extra note I have different PIN numbers for my debit and credit cards.

MorningcoffeeIV

You either pay the full balance now or wait until it's statemented and pay off just the cash (within the min payment).

grumbler

If  you see this transaction online and if your last statement is paid in full, I'm pretty sure whatever you pay is allocated to to the cash withdrawals first.

To avoid this happening the usual advice is to have a different PIN for your credit cards.

born_again

Ring them up, explain what happened. Might get a nice rep who will refund fee & change from cash to purchase. As a rule cash withdrawals attract interest from day one. So even paying back as soon as debited (which will actually go against last statement if you have a balance) will still attract some trailing interest.

aroominyork

retiredbanker1 said:

Make a manual payment of the amount you withdrew + the fee - let the transaction appear on your statement before doing this (not pending) - this should minimise the damage.

One extra note I have different PIN numbers for my debit and credit cards.

If I pay this before paying off my current statement (which is not due payment for a couple of weeks) will it still allocate the payment to the post-statement cash withdrawal?

grumbler

aroominyork said:

retiredbanker1 said:

Make a manual payment of the amount you withdrew + the fee - let the transaction appear on your statement before doing this (not pending) - this should minimise the damage.

One extra note I have different PIN numbers for my debit and credit cards.

If I pay this before paying off my current statement (which is not due payment for a couple of weeks) will it still allocate the payment to the post-statement cash withdrawal?

No                         

lr1277

Back in 2008 I did something similar. And in my case my debit card and credit card had different pins. But that was in the days before contactless so every time I used my credit card I had to enter my PIN, so I knew it very well.

When I realised later that evening, I made a manual payment of the amount withdrawn plust a little bit more to take  care of any fees. No fees were applied to my account for that cash withdrawl.

Edited to add: the only reason I suspect I realised was because then and now I enter all my transactions into desktop software that records all financial transactions and shows me a statement balance plus an expected balance when all transactions are taken into account. This level of data entry is tedious though not too onerous once setup. But it also means getting receipts for every transaction including cash machine withdrawals. Then when entering data checking the receipts for the card used. This allowed me to catch my mistake.

But nowadays with bank apps showing transactions in near real time, it is easier to keep on top of things.

Fingerbobs

born_again said:

Ring them up, explain what happened. Might get a nice rep who will refund fee & change from cash to purchase. As a rule cash withdrawals attract interest from day one. So even paying back as soon as debited (which will actually go against last statement if you have a balance) will still attract some trailing interest.

I second this - definitely call them and explain your mistake. If it's a one-off error, they will probably refund the fee and interest, as long as you promise never to do it again. 

NoodleDoodleMan

Fingerbobs said:

born_again said:

Ring them up, explain what happened. Might get a nice rep who will refund fee & change from cash to purchase. As a rule cash withdrawals attract interest from day one. So even paying back as soon as debited (which will actually go against last statement if you have a balance) will still attract some trailing interest.

I second this - definitely call them and explain your mistake. If it's a one-off error, they will probably refund the fee and interest, as long as you promise never to do it again. 

Seconded. Happened to me a few years ago - plead that you were unaware of fee for cash withdrawn.

You might get off with this if a first "offence" - but not again.

aroominyork

Well, that's 15 minutes of my life I won't get back! Phoned Nationwide who said that since I made the withdrawal after my last statement was issued, I have to pay off my entire current balance (which is a few thousand £) rather than just my current statement balance and then the withdrawal amount. She said the system does not allocate payments to cash withdrawals first. I think she's wrong. So I'll pay the statement off, then the cash, then see what happens.