First Direct current account - £1500 min payment

bitsnbytes

Hi all,

First direct is offering new customers £100 to open a new current account and another £100 if you don't like them and decide to close the account after 6 months. Now, my salary is over £1500 and is no problem for me to pay the salary into the new first direct account. However, my wife is self employed and perhaps earns around £800 a month. From a MSE tip, I was planning to open an account for her as well and move £700 from my account to hers. However, my wife received a call from first direct and it seems they reiterated the point that at least £1500 should go into the account and it needs to be from income.

Do you think they might find out about the additional income I transfer? If so, does it make it illegal? Please do advise. Don't want to do something that is on the wrong side of the law

I have no plans for closing the accounts, if they do offer £100 to open it should be a decent account. However, if it doesn't match up to my Halifax and A&L account I have no qualms about closing the account and getting another £100

Please do advise and sorry for the long post

johnmoney05

It is legal, but your wife might not get the £100 incentive.

CopperPlate_2

I think it's fairly certain that your wife won't get the £100 for her account if she mandates less than the required amount AND you do a transfer from your fd account to hers. There's another thread on the site that makes reference to it being a BACS transfer from an organisation such as an employer and that the bank can tell if it's simply a BACS transfer from another 'normal' (for want of a better word) bank account.

B.E.N

Thought I heard somewhere that there was an exception if you were self-employed.

I'm afraid that I can't find anything on the FD site to justify this belief, but it may be worth giving them a call, just in case I'm right..

bitsnbytes

Thanks everyone for the replys. Another point someone made (on another thread) is that if I do have to show her income as a minimum of £1500 then I'll have to lie on the application which might be considered as a fraud. So I guess I won't continue with her application.
However, this point aside, isn't it possible to pay cash into the first direct account? They certainly can't trace the source of the cash. I'm sure the question would comes as which company would ever pay in cash. Just wondering if first direct have mentioned anything about cash payments

tara747

I also applied for one of these and you definitely have to have your salary transferred to it. I am going to just ask my pay section to change to the new account, then ask them to stop after 6 months and close the account. £200 will hopefully be mine!!

:cool:

Has anyone opened the account and received the £100?

tinkerbell84

Yep. And I wouldn't close it for £1,000, never mind £100.

They are a SUPERB bank.

tara747

tinkerbell84 wrote: »

Yep. And I wouldn't close it for £1,000, never mind £100.

They are a SUPERB bank.

What is the interest rate on current balances?

tinkerbell84

Depends on the account. Check https://www.firstdirect.com

I don't really care about the interest as I'll be offsetting shortly - it works out as over 10% interest for me as a higher rate tax payer :beer:

tara747

tinkerbell84 wrote: »

Depends on the account. Check www.firstdirect.com

I don't really care about the interest as I'll be offsetting shortly - it works out as over 10% interest for me as a higher rate tax payer :beer:

From their website:

1st Account

1st Account does not pay interest on credit balances.

Shame!!!


How do you "offset"? Thanks.

SuiDreams

tara747 wrote: »

From their website:

1st Account

1st Account does not pay interest on credit balances.

Shame!!!
.

I keep all the money I need for the month in a linked savings accout then transfer it back for DD's etc. The rest goes into high interest Regular savers. Now that Faster payments have arrived I'm keeping more of my money else where at higher rates. Customer Services are excellent, haven't had the same standard anywhere else.