Withdrawing Cash on Your Credit Card Abroad

Another big plus with halifax clarity for foreign use is that you can preload the account before you go away so that no interest is charged on cash withdrawals. Just put on as much or perhaps a little extra than you plan to withdraw AS CASH by bacs transfer. It does not matter how much you spend on the card with credit transactions, your cash withdrawals will not attract interest.
If you are away on the statement date, then any preload balance may well be set against the total statement so you might have to either top up whilst you are away or withdraw enough cash for the rest of the holiday before the statement date.

I've been doing this with 100% success for several years of foreign travel.

Bob

Thanks for that YorkshireBoy.

They must have changed that because I specifically asked them via twitter ( for a degree of anonymity!) if it was acceptable when I first got the card - 4-5 years ago and got the go ahead.

Bob

As well as the Ts & Cs themselves (which are obviously the definitive position), they even specifically say not to do this in their FAQ at http://www.halifax.co.uk/creditcards/low-rate-no-fee/clarity-card/#Can_I_put_money_on_my_card:

Can I put money on my card to increase my available credit whilst on holiday?
Credit cards are not designed to be used this way. Using the card in this way breaches the product's Terms & Conditions, which state:
7.7 You must not make payments or transfer funds from another credit or store card to your account that would leave a credit balance on your account. We may return any funds that exceed the balance owing on your account to the account from which the money was sent.

MikeJ37 wrote: »

I have a Halifax Clarity card, which I only use abroad, and was advised by a Halifax assistant that putting money on the account before withdrawing cash could be seen as money laundering but was quite acceptable to transfer money from a current account after cash withdrawn. If you use card for purchase and money withdrawal any cash you transfer will be used to pay off cash advance first then purchases, there may then be no credit left to cover futher cash withdrawals. Therefore to be safe transfer money in only after cash advance has appeared on account, interest charge then will be minimal.

Payments are applied to statemented transactions first, so unless you clear the full balance you won't be able to avoid interest on the cash advance if you've got a pre-existing purchases balance.

All as detailed in your T&Cs.

It's funny, I was about to make a similar comment in another thread where a retailer used "money laundering" as an a reason for not being able to split a large transaction over two CCs.

The issue for CCs with pre-loading is that deposit taking has it's own distinct regulatory regime separate from lending.

Whether it raises money laundering issues depends on how the pre-loading is done. Eg large amounts of cash deposit would be high risk, a transfer from a current account, little/no risk.