Switching bank incentives for people with poor credit history?

dealyboy

OP ... good advice by several posters.

One thing or way of looking at it is that although you don't seem to be able to get any incentives at the moment you may well find, with improved circumstances, you will be able to open incentive bearing accounts in 6 months to a year's time.

Once you get an incentive you can't normally get another (according to switcher T&Cs) with the same bank for a few years. So those of us who grabbed a batch 6 months ago will need to wait a while.

Indeed you may find that when you start getting incentives that they're better than today's.

Good luck.

phillw

eskbanker said:
My understanding is that this is largely historical and relates to the ability to prevent accounts going overdrawn via offline versus online debit cards - most debit cards can be used offline, i.e. where there isn't the ability to seek real-time authorisation, such as on aircraft, which therefore allows the accounts to go overdrawn.  Online-only cards were introduced which can only be used where real-time authorisation is available, and so these can be used to exert greater control and effectively avoid overdrafts, hence being used with basic accounts.

There was also a time when debit cards were equivalent to the old cheque guarantee cards. You obviously can't have a guaranteed cheque if your account can't go overdrawn.