Halifax Reward account, way to beat not paying interest but still get the benefits?

mda99das

I have this account and it does not pay any interest.
Here are the terms

How to qualify for a monthly reward

Choose to either

• Spend £500 on your debit card each month

Or

• Keep £5000 or above in your account each day of the month

And

• Pay in £1500 or more into your account each month
• Stay in credit (keeping your balance at £0 or above)

To beat this can you keep a small balance eg £10, and the £1500 that enters gets "spent" on the debit card into an easy access account?  So in effect you set up a monthly payment using the halifax debit card by direct debit?

Thanks

ColdIron

Direct Debits don't use debit cards

You can use the DC to pay into an easy access account if you have an account that allows it. These won't be automated so you will need to do it yourself each month

WillPS

The simplest way I've found is, on the 1st of each month (or as close after as possible):

• Deposit £1500 (or £2500 if doing this x3)
• Transfer balance minus £500 away (on to the next Reward account if doing this x3)
• Spend £500 on debit card (credit card payment or building society/NS&I deposit)

Takes 2 mins per account for me on average. Helps to have a credit card which allows you to save multiple debit cards (Tesco Bank and Barclaycard are good for this) or at least have a password manager like Bitwarden which will manage your debit card details for you.

Make sure you remember to renew in good time, if you leave it til mid-month after expiration start the process again for that account that month after you've renewed.

Zaul22

Chip, Skipton and NS&I all let you deposit by debit card to meet the spending requirement. Or you can pay yourself with Starling or Monzo. Then just leave £1 in it. 

datlex

Revolut also works for the card spend and you don't have to keep any funds in it or send back to same account.

WillPS

datlex said:

Revolut also works for the card spend and you don't have to keep any funds in it or send back to same account.

It would be a no brainer option - unfortunately Revolut actively monitor usage of that feature and will disable it if they deem you to overuse it. I tend to use it as a fall-back option, if for some reason I actually need to get the money back quickly.

badmemory

As they regularly tell me I qualify for one of these, then add well I would if I spent £500 on my debit card.  As I don't spend even £1 on my debit card I can find better ways of making £2.

Nebulous2

I do a round of money transfers, in and out, on the 1st of the month.  Then I pay my Barclaycard manually with the debit card to get the £500 spend. That's usually around the 10th of the month, and I pay the money into the reward account immediately before making the Barclaycard payment. 

wmb194

badmemory said:

As they regularly tell me I qualify for one of these, then add well I would if I spent £500 on my debit card.  As I don't spend even £1 on my debit card I can find better ways of making £2.

You don't have to, "spend" anything on your debit card, though. See the comments above.

Zanderman

badmemory said:

As they regularly tell me I qualify for one of these, then add well I would if I spent £500 on my debit card.  As I don't spend even £1 on my debit card I can find better ways of making £2.

Easy to do the £500 spend, as others have pointed out in this thread (and multiple existing threads!)

And it's £5 not £2.

And you can have multiple accounts. 

But each to their own.