These guys look…interesting.
The perk value you get seems to be ~5% of whatever you deposit, so I’m guessing somehow they buy the vouchers at a discount, and then they can make close to BoE (3.75%) back on your savings through Griffin Bank.
Not exactly sure who this is for, but you’re effectively getting your year’s interest upfront in the form of a gift card!
Interesting approach which I can see appealing to some people, who wants to get £112 in interest in a years time when they can get Netflix for ‘free’ for a year. You do miss out on compounding of course
You also miss out on having to pay tax on the interest.
Hilarious, I love it.
Don’t think HMRC would be happy with this
They never did anything about the air miles savings accounts that ran for many years.
Thing is HMRC is still going to tax like the purchase of the gift cards, and also the interest that Stoa makes from Griffin Bank.
And then HMRC also gets the VAT from us purchasing with the gift cards. So really I don’t think HMRC will be that bothered.
Avios / air miles savings accounts sounds interesting! So you just got points added to your balance rather than being paid the interest 
Yes. RBS/NatWest/Ulster ran them until the air miles contract moved to a different banking group. I think you can still get what’s now Avios as a rewards payout on their rewards cards, also tax-free.
It was in the days when it was called air miles, so ten years or more ago.
The NW/RBS rewards are tax-free anyway as they’re classed as cashback, aren’t they? If not then I’ve accidentally not been declaring some income to HMRC for years.
I think the Avios conversion rate isn’t particularly good either last time I checked, though maybe it was better in the past.
This is tempting.
Unless my maths is wrong (quite possible) this provider seems really quite interesting to me. Assuming any savings allowance is already used, £20k that would have otherwise been in an easy access account at say a market average of 4% would give you £800 pre-tax interest after a year. I reckon you could get £1k of vouchers for the equivalent of the post-tax interest return of a 4% savings account below:
Is that correct?
HMRC will still tax Stoa on the 3.75% they make on their savings with Griffin?
And we’re still taxed (via VAT) when we buy stuff in Argos or JL or whatever voucher one chooses.
They never bothered to tax the air miles accounts and they were run by a major bank for years. Stia is a tiny outfit so likely to fly under the radar for years too.
Slightly more attractive from next year when the tax on savings interest increases by 2%
Wait what
Oxygen tax when