Barclaycard - Money Transfer

Johnny-Cage

Anyone got any experience with money transfers coz I can’t get a straight answer from Barclays.

I have 1k that’s interest free until 2025.

If I have a statement balance say £500.
If I pay more than the £500 does the extra reduce the interest free amount or does it just reduce what’s been spent on the card since the statement.

My BarclayCard is my daily card and looking to keep reducing this interest free amount slowly per month than just needing to pay the 1k in one hit in 2025

Brie

Any payments will be applied against whatever is the highest interest items on your account.  So the 0% amount won't get touched if there's anything else that attracts interest. 

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

That's why one should never use the same card for transfers and purchases.  The only time it's ok is when a card has both a 0% transfer offer along with a 0% purchase offer.  OR when you have a particular M&S card where they don't take the 0% transfer into account for paying off your balance.  

Scenarios.....

So 1st Dec your card statement comes in and has £500 owing and you've done the £1k 0% transfer.  Pay £500 by the payment date and everything is fine and at 1st Jan you still owe the £1k which has 0% interest being charged.  You have your DD set to minimum payment and you tick along slowly paying down the £1k over the following months and set aside enough to clear the rest of the balance on the last day before the offer expires in 2025.

BUT

Instead 1st Dec your statement comes in and has £500 and you do the £1k transfer and spend £200 on 10th Dec and then pay the £500 owing by the payment date.  Come the 1st Jan statement you owe £1,200.  Because you hadn't cleared the balance in full interest is charged on the £200 from 10th Dec until it is paid off.  And then more interest will be charged on the interest that you have accrued until it is paid off. 

And also

If you have a cleared balance of zero on your statement on 1st Dec and you do your transfer of £1k on 5th Dec and then spend £200 on 10th Dec and later in the month make a payment of £200 that payment will be applied to the transfer as it was the earlier transaction.  


For what it's worth - Barclaycard was so bad at being able to advise what order payments would be applied they were forever having to pay me compensation for wrong information.  Which is probably why the ended up cutting my credit limit by about 90%.

Johnny-Cage

Brie said:

Any payments will be applied against whatever is the highest interest items on your account.  So the 0% amount won't get touched if there's anything else that attracts interest. 

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

That's why one should never use the same card for transfers and purchases.  The only time it's ok is when a card has both a 0% transfer offer along with a 0% purchase offer.  OR when you have a particular M&S card where they don't take the 0% transfer into account for paying off your balance.  

Scenarios.....

So 1st Dec your card statement comes in and has £500 owing and you've done the £1k 0% transfer.  Pay £500 by the payment date and everything is fine and at 1st Jan you still owe the £1k which has 0% interest being charged.  You have your DD set to minimum payment and you tick along slowly paying down the £1k over the following months and set aside enough to clear the rest of the balance on the last day before the offer expires in 2025.

BUT

Instead 1st Dec your statement comes in and has £500 and you do the £1k transfer and spend £200 on 10th Dec and then pay the £500 owing by the payment date.  Come the 1st Jan statement you owe £1,200.  Because you hadn't cleared the balance in full interest is charged on the £200 from 10th Dec until it is paid off.  And then more interest will be charged on the interest that you have accrued until it is paid off. 

And also

If you have a cleared balance of zero on your statement on 1st Dec and you do your transfer of £1k on 5th Dec and then spend £200 on 10th Dec and later in the month make a payment of £200 that payment will be applied to the transfer as it was the earlier transaction.  


For what it's worth - Barclaycard was so bad at being able to advise what order payments would be applied they were forever having to pay me compensation for wrong information.  Which is probably why the ended up cutting my credit limit by about 90%.

Thanks for explaining it in detail.

I always pay my statement balance in full so never pay interest on any purchases. Just seems my best option is instead of over paying over the statement amount put it in a bank account each month. Other wise sounds like any overpayment will just reduce mid spending between statements 

MorningcoffeeIV

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

Johnny-Cage

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

100% correct coz I paid my statement off in full and left the £1k balance and no interest added.
Further down the statement it’s listed £1017.66 0% to April 25 

zagfles

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

Yes, as they say here:

https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/interest-free-period

The example is a bit misleading, as it implies there's a separate min payment on the promotional balance, there isn't, the min payment is a % of the entire balance. So if you pay off the greater of your previous statement's spending and min payment then you pay no interest. So you can use the card as normal for spending and just pay all your spending off, and if you keep spending high enough so that it exceeds the min payment then you get the benefit of the 0% interest on the whole amount of the promotional balance for the whole period, whereas if you didn't use it for spending, you'd be paying down the promotional balance because of the min payment. Just stick the extra you'd use to pay off the pomotional balance into a savings account.

Only thing is you have to do it manually, you can't set the DD to just pay off your spending. You can have a fixed DD but you have to adjust it every month, unless you spend exactly the same.

Other thing to watch out for is credits. BC seem to treat credits as payments, so pay off the existing statement balance. This is counter intuative, eg if you buy an item and take it back and get a refund, you'd have thought that would just cancel the transaction, but they seem to treat it as a purchase and payment so the credit pays off the statement balance rather than reduces this month's purchase balance.

Brie

Barclaycard has changed since I used it.  I'm glad.  

born_again

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

But just wait till you have a statement with them on. Or any payments goes towards the last statement.

surreysaver

zagfles said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

Yes, as they say here:

https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/interest-free-period

The example is a bit misleading, as it implies there's a separate min payment on the promotional balance, there isn't, the min payment is a % of the entire balance. So if you pay off the greater of your previous statement's spending and min payment then you pay no interest. So you can use the card as normal for spending and just pay all your spending off, and if you keep spending high enough so that it exceeds the min payment then you get the benefit of the 0% interest on the whole amount of the promotional balance for the whole period, whereas if you didn't use it for spending, you'd be paying down the promotional balance because of the min payment. Just stick the extra you'd use to pay off the pomotional balance into a savings account.

Only thing is you have to do it manually, you can't set the DD to just pay off your spending. You can have a fixed DD but you have to adjust it every month, unless you spend exactly the same.

Other thing to watch out for is credits. BC seem to treat credits as payments, so pay off the existing statement balance. This is counter intuative, eg if you buy an item and take it back and get a refund, you'd have thought that would just cancel the transaction, but they seem to treat it as a purchase and payment so the credit pays off the statement balance rather than reduces this month's purchase balance.

Or keep a direct debit set up to pay the minimum payment just in case you slip up, but pay off purchases manually. As long as you do that far enough in advance of the direct debit due date (say at least five working days), Barclaycard adjust the direct debit.

born_again

surreysaver said:

zagfles said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

Yes, as they say here:

https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/interest-free-period

The example is a bit misleading, as it implies there's a separate min payment on the promotional balance, there isn't, the min payment is a % of the entire balance. So if you pay off the greater of your previous statement's spending and min payment then you pay no interest. So you can use the card as normal for spending and just pay all your spending off, and if you keep spending high enough so that it exceeds the min payment then you get the benefit of the 0% interest on the whole amount of the promotional balance for the whole period, whereas if you didn't use it for spending, you'd be paying down the promotional balance because of the min payment. Just stick the extra you'd use to pay off the pomotional balance into a savings account.

Only thing is you have to do it manually, you can't set the DD to just pay off your spending. You can have a fixed DD but you have to adjust it every month, unless you spend exactly the same.

Other thing to watch out for is credits. BC seem to treat credits as payments, so pay off the existing statement balance. This is counter intuative, eg if you buy an item and take it back and get a refund, you'd have thought that would just cancel the transaction, but they seem to treat it as a purchase and payment so the credit pays off the statement balance rather than reduces this month's purchase balance.

Or keep a direct debit set up to pay the minimum payment just in case you slip up, but pay off purchases manually. As long as you do that far enough in advance of the direct debit due date (say at least five working days), Barclaycard adjust the direct debit.

If you pay them off before they are on the monthly statement. Any payments go towards last statement....
OP would then incur interest on the purchases.. 

zagfles

born_again said:

surreysaver said:

zagfles said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

Brie said:

And that's the problem.  If you don't pay your account off in full (which you don't want to do as you've got the 0% MT til 2025) then every single purchase you make with the card will start accruing interest from the day you make that purchase.  So no interest free period for purchases. 

Yeah, that's not true on Barclaycard. As long as you pay off all but the 0% transactions, interest is waived 

Yes, as they say here:

https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/interest-free-period

The example is a bit misleading, as it implies there's a separate min payment on the promotional balance, there isn't, the min payment is a % of the entire balance. So if you pay off the greater of your previous statement's spending and min payment then you pay no interest. So you can use the card as normal for spending and just pay all your spending off, and if you keep spending high enough so that it exceeds the min payment then you get the benefit of the 0% interest on the whole amount of the promotional balance for the whole period, whereas if you didn't use it for spending, you'd be paying down the promotional balance because of the min payment. Just stick the extra you'd use to pay off the pomotional balance into a savings account.

Only thing is you have to do it manually, you can't set the DD to just pay off your spending. You can have a fixed DD but you have to adjust it every month, unless you spend exactly the same.

Other thing to watch out for is credits. BC seem to treat credits as payments, so pay off the existing statement balance. This is counter intuative, eg if you buy an item and take it back and get a refund, you'd have thought that would just cancel the transaction, but they seem to treat it as a purchase and payment so the credit pays off the statement balance rather than reduces this month's purchase balance.

Or keep a direct debit set up to pay the minimum payment just in case you slip up, but pay off purchases manually. As long as you do that far enough in advance of the direct debit due date (say at least five working days), Barclaycard adjust the direct debit.

If you pay them off before they are on the monthly statement. Any payments go towards last statement....
OP would then incur interest on the purchases.. 

PP wasn't suggesting paying them off before they're on the monthly statement. Just before the DD date, which is about 25 days after the statement date.

But yes don't pay any purchases off before they're on the monthy statement! It won't pay them, it'll pay the balance transfer. That's why I mentioned the potential problems with credits in my PP.