So my situation is a bit complicated… I generally send over between £6k-8k month, but I do get an education allowance from my job on top of salary 3-4 times/year (which pays a decent portion of private school fees) so the total I sent over in the past 365 days was £153k. Even though my base salary was less than that I imagine that figure was why I got auto-approved since it all comes into my NatWest account the same way (via Wise).
That makes sense. I suppose a certain amount entering the account, would trigger the auto approve when upgrading.
Got my premier black debit & credit cards in the mail today. Funnily enough I had asked for a limit increase on my regular Natwest card a few months back (due to an unexpected large expense) and they only raised my limit from £10,350 to £11,900. But when I applied for the premier black credit card they immediately approved me with a limit of £14k… 
One thing the does bother me a bit about Natwest - additional cardholders have no means of seeing their card transactions, which seems crazy to me. My wife and I have a joint current account, handle all finances jointly, but there’s no way for her to see her credit card transactions either online or on the app since the card is in my name… Do all banks do it like that or is Natwest unique?
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Amex is the only one I know of that has separate online portals / app access for each cardholder, and also clearly flags up the supplementary spend on your account. Any other multiple user credit cards I have just lump all the spend together.
I don’t mind both spends being lumped together (in fact I prefer it), I just wish there was a way for the additional card holder to be able to see the transactions too!
Barclaycard doesn’t give out separate logins for additional credit card holders, however they do clearly show which card each transaction belongs to in the statement (they show the last four digits of the card).
We just have the Barclays app on both our phones logged in with the same credentials.
Oh that is an interesting idea (logging into the app on both phones with my credentials). Only kicker is we each have a digital regular saver account, and my account only shows mine whereas her account only shows hers… Maybe I can fix that with open banking…
Ah yes that doesn’t work if you each have individual accounts. We don’t bank with Barclays, we just have the Barclaycard so it’s not an issue in our case.
A workaround I use for this is to add the credit card to my wife’s Apple Wallet and use the open banking feature to link the card with my NatWest login. That way she can see the transactions and balance in the Wallet app on her phone.
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An alternative to this I just set up. Used the “accounts with other banks” feature in the NatWest app on my wife’s phone, linked my NatWest account and shared the credit card. Now she can see the balance and transactions in her NatWest app.
Does anyone have the Reward Silver account? Seems like a pretty tempting alternative to Monzo Max, I only need the phone insurance and travel anyway and with rewards it’d only be £5/month. Any good?
I’ve had the Reward Silver account for about 8 years. Still the same price it was when we opened it. If it’s a joint account the phone and travel insurance covers both of you! Incredible value in my opinion.
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Nice! Have you had to use the phone insurance? Seeing if the savings are worth it instead of getting AppleCare.
I used it once. They couldn’t repair or replace my phone so gave me the RRP in cash.
What phone was that that?
An iPhone. Don’t remember exactly which model
Interesting experience at my local NatWest branch yesterday. I had to pull out a sizeable amount of cash (enough that they needed to order in the cash beforehand to make sure they had enough on hand). When I got there they took me aside and went through all the normal KYC/fraud questions, but when it came time to actually get the cash they walked me to a little vault thing in the lobby and told me to wait. A minute later they opened a little window to make sure it was me, then rotated the vault door to let me pick up the large brown envelope full of cash…
Apart from being a relatively bizarre experience in the first place, I was not happy with how.. public.. it all was. I counted at least six customers who could see me standing there awkwardly before I grabbed the thick brown envelope and walked out of the branch. I was expecting 1) to be taken to a side room or private cubby (they have three of these in the branch) and 2) to be given opportunity to at least verify the amount before I left, but neither of those things happened. Maybe I’m being overly paranoid? Was my experience typical for a UK bank?
I don’t think you’re paranoid, I’d much rather a discreet room if taking such amounts out.
Raise a complaint and stress how anxious it made you feel. Poor process indeed.
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Just be thankful that you had a large sum of money to withdraw which the bank had to order not everyone is in the same position
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strange take… and irrelevant to the concern.
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