And imagine if that card and flick between “credit” and debit mode when needed without the customer.
So anywhere MasterCard is accepted it defaults to credit and falls back to debit. Those credit payments accounted for in a credit pot/space the instance you pay.
I’m looking for things like this. Where the bank actively says yes I’m crypto friendly and forward thinking.
Combining wealth in fiat and crypto 
Nice minimal-ish layout too
I believe that this isn’t technically possible at the moment, as Visa and Mastercard allocate a card number (BIN) which is coded as either credit or debit.
So you would either have to have a card which presented as credit all the time, like the Bunq travel card (and potentially didn’t work in debit-only situations as a result) or a card which presented as debit all the time, like Curve (therefore losing the Section 75 protection of credit, and the higher interchange fees for the bank).
Monzo definitely isn’t your thing then:
Monzo seems hesitant to show the same openness to crypto, however, with Pagni [Monzo’s legal council] dismissing Bitcoin as a “fad”.
It’s been covered by Monzo staff to that Monzo is a crypto positive bank however I use Halifax for my on ramp.
Each to their own opinion but personally as an investor I’d rather not see Monzo waste resource and expose themselves to unnecessary risk by supporting a novelty investment product.
You could argue Monzo is a novelty investment product.
You could argue the sky is purple I suppose 🤷
Does this mean I should buy crypto?
I don’t know, but I won’t be investing in banks.
Any bank not specifically Monzo 
Just seen this in my Barclays app. How does it actually work. Do they convert your, say Nectar Points, into Barclays Rewards or are they in addition to those points?
That’s excellent. I’ve long wondered why this isn’t a standard feature for all banks. It’s crazy to me that you can have £1,000 sitting in a savings account, but if your current account goes to -£10 you suddenly start getting charged.
It’s a very limited feature so far.
I think it works by the checkout process at supported retailers automatically feeding a transaction ID into a Bink backend system which is also synced-up with the debit card authorisation code in some way.
Barclays then match the transaction to your loyalty card account on your behalf, so there is no need to present the loyalty card at the time. You just pay with your Barclays Debit card and automatically accrue points.
It’s quite similar to how Flux deal with e-receipts, on a technical level.
Separately, but related, the integration with Barclays allows you to view your points balance from the loyalty cards in the Barclays app.
Several banks have offered such a facility for years, even if they haven’t given it a name like TSB have or publicised the functionality…
‘Crypto neutral’ might be a fairer assessment. They haven’t banned crypto transactions outright (and no sign they may do so), and they’ve said that personal use transactions shouldn’t be a problem. BUT, they haven’t advertised themselves for crypto, and haven’t put it out there unprompted that a Monzo account would be a great option for crypto. Hence, overall, neutral.
A true crypto positive bank would be something like Revolut, where they’ve built in the ability to buy and sell crypto and advertise that. (And yes, I know Revolut isn’t actually a bank.)
Yeah I was going with a binary for or against, but neutral is fair out of three,
In terms of UK banks it’s one of a few in comparison to other “banks”
I haven’t tried Revolut yet, I like the kids option they do. But Starling is decent. Monzo over Starling in terms of crypto friendliness though.
I’ve had a bad experience with 3 banks - Virgin Money, Starling, and Lloyds, both of which were in the process of opening my account which I subsequently decided to stop for both banks. Starling’s customer service seemed to be completely non-existent and had to spend ages on the phone waiting for them to pick up and then the attitude of the Lloyds’ agent annoyed me quite a bit. I was able to contact Virgin Money very easily, however, they were completely useless.
My other banks that I have experienced the customer service for (Monzo, Barclays, and Nationwide) have been very good.
I also have a Santander and Tesco Clubcard Plus account with Tesco Bank but I’ve never needed customer service.
I have subsequently cut down on the number of accounts I have. I now only have accounts with Santander, Nationwide, and Tesco Clubcard Plus.
Yeah, most banks are much of a muchness; you get the odd bad agent or poor service with all of them, but they are generally all OK.
Some are a bit worse than others, but not by much and I think the official ratings from the “Personal banking service quality” survey, conducted by IPSOS Mori, prove this point.
The difference in overall ratings, between all the banks, is always just a few percentage points.
Barclays and Starling are my worst. Monzo always good. Halifax varying.
Starling was hopefully a one off but it was dismal, I was left without account access for months. Barclays is the only bank I had several bad experiences to the point where I left the bank because of it. And I’m usually pretty relaxed about customer service (I know how hard their job is) but Barclays became a farce.