Post Office Online ISA - Payments In

PlatinumChaos

I recently opened a Post Office Online ISA, and my initial £100 deposit is now showing in my account. As I understand it, I can only make payments into this account by debit card or cheque. My First Direct debit card limit appears to be £10,000 in any rolling 30-day period. Depending on other spending on my card, does this mean that it could potentially take me several months to even pay in the maximum £20,000 that I intend to deposit?

refluxer

Are you sure you can't pay into it via a bank transfer ? I've never held a Post Office ISA, but did hold an Online Saver account with them a good few years ago and there were 3 methods of paying in - bank transfer, debit card and some kind of 'pull' method from within the account itself (I don't remember the latter involving open banking, so I'm not sure how that worked - it may have been akin to a manual Direct Debit instruction. I do remember it taking a ridiculous amount of time for payments to show up though (over a week !), so only ever used it for one initial test payment)

Also - I've never heard of a current account with a rolling monthly spending limit. While a £10k/month limit wouldn't affect the majority of customers on a regular basis, it obviously becomes restrictive if you need to move savings around in this way. Do you have another, less restrictive current account you could transfer the funds to, before making a single debit card payment into the ISA ? It's always good to have a back-up current account. 

PlatinumChaos

I'd happily pay in by bank transfer, but the PO specifically state in the ISA account that "Post Office ISAs do not have an account number/sort code", so that's not an option. When I try to pay money into the account online, I'm simply given two options: debit card or cheque. The debit card transaction is handled by WorldPay.

I've checked with First Direct (my nominated account for the ISA when I submitted my application), and it seems I am indeed restricted to this 30-day limit for card payments. So I think my options now are as follows: 1) contact the PO and ask them whether they can give me account details that enable me to pay by bank transfer, 2) accept that it's going to take a couple of months to make the maximum possible payment into my ISA, or 3) close my ISA account ASAP and choose another provider that's actually made it into the 21st Century.

refluxer

Ah OK, fair enough. Definitely sounds like an odd restriction and the kind of limitation that you'd associate with a branch account rather than an online savings account.

I probably wouldn't waste time with (1) because if that was possible, then they'd offer it as an option. If you got a chequebook with the First Direct account then I'd be tempted to just bite the bullet and post off a cheque but if that's not an option, then I'd either be using an alternative current account to fund it or looking elsewhere for your ISA funds - I've never held an ISA which I couldn't pay into with a bank transfer, so I suspect that daft limitation is particular to the Post Office.

Do you not have a suitable, alternative current account ? If you did pay 2 x £10k installments by debit card from your First Direct account, then you wouldn't be able to use the card for anything else for 2 months.

PlatinumChaos

I've submitted a request to change my nominated account to a different current account. I guessed that would be the simplest solution. Ha, we'll see how that works out for me... 

boingy

The First Direct £10000 in 30 days thing is ONLY for cryptocurrencies. Details at the bottom of this page:

Payments and transfers help | first direct

PlatinumChaos

boingy said:

The First Direct £10000 in 30 days thing is ONLY for cryptocurrencies. Details at the bottom of this page:

Payments and transfers help | first direct

Thanks, boingy. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't spot that, but also annoyed with First Direct that they didn't correct me when I specifically asked them about this yesterday. Argh! Oh well, I've initiated the request to change my nominated account, and I guess I'll only need it once (to transfer the maximum amount permitted) before I transfer it all to something else in 12 months' time.