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Barclaycard Online Servicing now closed
Comments
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I suppose when this catches up with me, I will have to dust off and use it to convert the CSV file into a QIF in order to import the data into Moneydance. I have used it before with other banks, but have been using OFX with Barclaycard and Nationwide for quite a long time.
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If you're relying on data that they have arbitrarily decided to no longer make available, it doesn't make any difference what approach you use…
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Back in the day Barclays Bank and Barclaycard had separate apps, and separate websites.
The app merge happened first - everything in one place, never had any downloads other than PDF statements.
The websites were separate and had obviously different code bases.
In theory you could view your Barclaycard from the Barclays Bank website, but clicking on the link took you to a second login page, so you never used that route. That mess ended a couple of years ago.
The websites allowed "proper" transaction downloads.
As far as today is concerned, if you access your Barclaycard account via the Barclays Bank website, you can still get the same basic data that was previously downloadable in OFX, or QIF format, but it's in CSV format with drawbacks:
If you used QIF, all the data is there with a bonus that one field contains an account identifier. CSV>QIF is (for me) easily coded using Perl.
If you used OFX, the key missing thing is the lack of a FITID - thats a unique identifier for each transaction which means that if you load a set of previously reconciled transactions, it only tries to reconcile "new"/previously unseen items. This can be "synthesised" in a perl script, but any web based file converter will probably struggle.
The other disadvantage across all formats is that the default download is the "current statement" view. The old website was usefully inflexible - select Jul 2026 and click download, and you got all the transactions on you Jul 2026 statement. Select recent transactions, and you got all transactions since the last statement. If you want to replicate that behaviour, you need remember when the last statement was.
In my case, I've coded a CSV to OFX converter script that does the job, and as previously mentioned the number of transactions over the next 12 months will drop significantly as the Lloyds Ultra card (1% cb) takes over the "daily driver" role from Barclaycard (0.5% cb). I'll put some transactions through, but only to keep the card "active".
The move to the Ultra card was triggered by an upcoming holiday, not Barclays service erosion.
All my downloadable transactions go into MS Money - been doing it for 26 years, the boat that had a button that let you click a button in Money and download all transactions in one go set sail years ago.
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The data's still there (apart from one bit).
It kind of like when Eric Morecambe once said to Andre Previn "I'm playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order"
In case you've never seen it:
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Lucky you…… meanwhile I have just had to report a potential scam, made all the worse because I can't actually see my details online, so my card has been blocked just before I go away for 5 weeks. It is 4 weeks today since the error code on registering for the Barclays online service was reported. Over 2 weeks since a formal complaint raised. No change…… and no updates.
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I've used Money since it I picked it up in a bundle with a Dan PC in 1994 😊 It's still in use to manage the bank accounts (with Natwest, who still provide OFX), but plays no other role for the Barclaycard than maintain the register for easy search. I've only ever seen QIF downloads from the Barclaycard site, which work fine for that purpose - but I acknowledge the mess of the statement vs dates stuff on the Barclaycard bit of the Barclays site, it's one of the things I complained about. I think I might have missed some of the inadequacies of the old site as I never did more than download the statement every month as QIF and also as CSV. QIF into money (to arrange the future transfer to balance it from the bank). To date I've had no need to manipulate raw data, which is good as my first port of call for something like that would probably be nawk and I neither have a windows variant nor run any *nix environments :-)
The CSV is much more important to me and the bits they have busted were the reason I ended up talking to them at some length. When I retired three years ago, I grew a spreadsheet that tracked our investments and current / future pension incomes into a behemoth Excel forecasting model up until we are both on BSP (7 years or so). The cost side of the equation is driven by the monthly bills from the bank and the spend on the Barclaycard, which we use for everything else. Each month gets brought into a masterdata sheet which drives a pivot table, from which I extract a rolling average that drives (part of) the forecast (with some historic inflation adjustment)
The old csv included a category, which was generally spot-on, although I tweak it a bit before bringing each month in. This made the data more useful, but also allows me to predict a drop in spend (after my daughters are no longer dependent) with a good degree of accuracy (groceries down 40%, wine down 0% etc), a likely increase in travel spend etc.
The 'new' csv omits this data at a transaction level. I can add it back, but with ~ 100 entries a month, that's a real bind. It also omits the cardholder that effected each transaction, which is often really useful when I do a quick scan and don't recognise a transaction. Alongside actually missing a transaction, using the ledger date rather than the transaction etc etc
At the end of the day, I know the proportions based on 4 years of data, so I could just switch to using that. It's just really annoying that they've removed data that has genuine value for no apparent good reason. I'm expecting a call from their Digital team in the next day or so about the date issue and am hoping to get some insight into whether the migration has some unexpected complication (I much doubt it) or it's just shabbily done, on the cheap, with little understanding of, nor care for, the implications for customers.
Either way, interested in your experience with Lloyds. If I can have a second card and the csv is as good (hard not to be) then I will probably follow you.
I asked Copilot to break down where the profit drops in the complex credit card equation last night, which was quite enlightening. As part of that equation, based on spend, no of transactions, cashback and always paying the bill on the due date it estimated we cost Barclaycard about £300pa. So, I doubt they'll be sorry to lose me 😁1 -
From a download point of view, the Ultra card supports CSV and QIF downloads.
Exporting the files is as simple as selecting the account, selecting the correct month (if required) then clicking on the export dropdown to select the format. The file is either for the statement month selected or for "since last statement" by default.
The CSV :nwas exactly the same format as that used for Halifax Clarity.
The headings are "Transaction Date","Transaction Cleared Date","Transaction Type","Transaction Description","Transaction Amount".
QIF files use the actual transaction date and only include the date, payee, and transaction amount fields.
The website only shows "cleared date" (aka "posted date" - not useful if you ask me), which makes it more difficult to find transactions compared to Money.
The CSV Transaction type isn't very useful - tells you whether it was contactless/chip and PIN,online.
Note that there is no card number field in the CSV itself (I use the first 4 characters of the filename to identify the account (last 4 digits of card number).
As far as the card is concerned, used it at home and away with no issues.
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OK, that's useful - thanks.
I don't know from where Barclaycard attach their Category - presumably something SICish in the system somewhere - but it's a real shame it's not more prevalent (even in Barclaycard now, it seems). It's genuinely useful.0 -
The Barclaycard transaction web pages show a classification (You need to click on "see more transactions"), but it appears that this is derived from the MCC code on the original transaction. That then gets mapped onto the classification you see on the web page.
So the MCC "Automatic Fuel Dispenser" for Tesco Pay at Pump, and or MCC "Service stations" for BP both get get shown as "Petrol & Diesel".
I would say that "grouping" of MCC codes on Barclaycard is actually a useful improvement , but it's not included in the CSV output, and even if it was I wouldn't be able to make use of it.
If banks/financial institutions only adopted the attitude of "CSV transaction files contain everything related to the transaction that's safe to hand over", this would maximise the utility of the format, as it's easy to ignore unwanted data.
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100% agree. Why would they not? it's trivial to make it available in a standardised, neutral format and some customers will consider it a reason for everlasting loyalty!
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