State pension increase - when does it take effect?

spot1034

I'm new to all this - I was 66 in December last year so have been receiving the state pension since then. My payment date is today - April 12th and it is still the same amount as previous full payments - £815.40, i.e. 4 times the old weekly amount of £203.85. My first payment in December was a part payment from my birthday, Dec 5th, to the first pay date which was Dec 22nd, and came to £524.19, which can be easily worked out as the weekly rate divided by 7 to give a daily amount, and then multiplied by the number of days from my birthday up to and including the first pay date (18) rounded up to the nearest penny. Therefore I'm quite clear that I'm being paid in arrears up to and including each pay date, which rather led me to think that I would get five days at the new daily rate this time. I got a letter informing me of the new amount payable from May, and no mention was made of the April payment which I thought was odd, and now I know why!

So this effectively means that I only qualify for the new rate from tomorrow - April 13th, not the 8th after all. I believe your payment date is determined by the last two numerical digits of your NI number, so does that mean that people are qualifying for the new rate of state pension on different dates determined by their NI number?