Definitely not going to start treating it as free money. Just wanting it to have some credit history. I’ve made sure I’ve paid attention to all the recommendations of how to use a credit card responsibly.
I have had an email from Barclaycard which, although it is unlikely to affect me personally, I found quite concerning.
From 22 July 2024, the interest rates on my Barclaycard Rewards credit card is increasing.
I always pay IN FULL, so this doesn’t bother me.
However, the next piece of info may affect those who don’t pay in full as it advised, from getting same date, they are reducing the minimum payment required each month.
Surely this could lead to those carrying a balance, and thus paying more interest, getting into debt issues if they then pay the new lower minimum monthly payments, which will take longer to pay off.
I agree this could create problems for some people. I’m sure I remember the card companies being told to have higher repayment amounts or percentages as part of measures to prevent people getting into difficulty.
Barclays in my experience throw lots of offers and incentives to make you spend. You have to be quite disciplined.
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I think they did yeah, the minimum used to be 2.25% but got bumped to 3.25% about a year ago, now it’s down to 1%.
Personally I like having cards with offers and low minimum payments, but only because I use them to my advantage.
There’s still measures to protect against being in persistent debt, something like if you’ve been paying more in interest than against the principal balance for a certain period of time they can change your payment terms.
General advice if you are carrying a balance would still always be to pay as much as possible every month, I’d only want to be paying the minimum if there was an offer in place. If someone has a very high balance and can only afford the minimum payment then that’s probably indicative of a bigger problem and they’d be in trouble if the minimum was 1% or 3%.
Surely at that point you’re employed? I interpret student as student with no fixed income. If you’re working then you’re employed. Not advice just how I’d do it.
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Blockquote You can apply for a Lloyds Bank credit card if:
- You’re a UK resident, aged 18 or over, with a regular annual income.
…- You’re not unemployed or a student.
Maybe their point here was more if you’re unemployed we don’t care if that’s because you’re a student - we still don’t want you to apply.
Just tricky with it saying ‘you can apply…if you’re not…a student’.
Or in the case of Halifax:
You must be:
- aged 18 or over
- a UK resident
- employed with a regular yearly income.
You must not:
- be a full-time student
So even though I’m employed with a regular yearly income, as a full time student I’m ineligible.
I think Barclays card doesn’t work through Google Wallet, only their current accounts
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I think that used to be because they wanted you to use NFC through their app. I know when I had a Barclays account and an Android phone, it used to be a pain to get it work with Google Wallet/Pay.
I’ve not tried it off late as I don’t have the need to pay using my Barclaycard. I tend to use it for the balance transfer offers.
Barclays never had the Google pay capability, only through their own banking app. They ditched it a while back, but it’s hardly a dealbreaker for me - I can just use the plastic card to pay.
Do Google/Apple slice off some sort of percentage using their payment methods?
If it isn’t - is it in the data they can collect from the transaction?
Barclays debit cards do now. Barclaycard doesn’t though
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They’re happy with Apple doing it for both & Google too for debit cards.
Excluding Barclays Basic account.
I just had a look… I wondered why they’d disallow that. Possibly, due to offline transactions putting the customer into an overdrawn state? It looks like the card isn’t contactless, too!
Course, this is understandable, but nowadays how would you pay at a vending machine, or for the bus, things like that?
Virgin, Nationwide and co-op allow contactless on their basic accounts. I think it’s just Barclays being difficult.
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That they do well. I have two profiles. One has a savings account, the other a current account, but they both show my Barclaycard? I’ve requested merging several times.
It’s always been the case with Barclays Basic.
Doesn’t really make sense to be fair.
Santander too. Their basic account debit card isn’t contactless.
I think that is more to do with the fact that NFC access on iPhones is restricted to Apple only.
Barclaycard has turned up and have managed to set everything up! Now just need to make sure I use it reasonably and pay it off in full
I think I was surprised about getting a £1,200 limit because the sites (MSE etc) said I had a 0% chance of acceptance, I had never had a card before, I already have an interest free overdraft with my Santander student account, and I had just applied for Capital One who hard checked me but couldn’t verify my details for some reason.