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Has Tesco blocked Pay+ debit cards from paying HMRC?

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Last week we ran a long article about Tesco Bank’s new Clubcard Pay+ card.

This is a prepaid debit card – which you load via bank transfer from an app – earning 1 Clubcard point for every £8 you spend on it.

It is not hugely exciting for the majority, as it is only useful if you spend money at places where debit cards are accepted, but not credit cards. What you could do, however, was pay HMRC with it. This gets you a small return on your tax payments.

It looks Tesco Bank was a bit taken aback by the huge number of applications following our article. We tracked over 1,000 clicks to the website.

Yesterday morning I heard the first story of payments to HMRC with Pay+ failing.

Later, another reader got in touch to say that he had called Tesco Bank, to be told that it is no longer being accepted by HMRC. Tesco Bank helpfully let him transfer his pre-loaded funds back into his current account.

Two examples is still a small sample. To be honest, I would have expected more reader emails if Tesco Bank really had pulled the plug. However, there is also one report of problems in the Pay+ thread in our forums.

It is not 100% certain that this route to paying your tax has been closed (the first failure could have been due to the size of the transfer and the second due to a badly trained phone agent). That said, if you were thinking of applying I would hold back until we get more data.

EDIT: the comments below are split between people struggling and those for whom it is working fine. A reader emailed to say he paid £25,000 yesterday with no issues and another has paid £95,000 this week. All very odd. It may be that you need to wait a couple of days after transferring money in before trying to spend it, or that you should build up via some smaller transactions.

Our original article on Tesco Bank’s Pay+ card is here.

You can learn more about Clubcard Pay+ on its website here.

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Comments (51)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Ian says:
    26 Jan26 January 13:00

    It’s only a matter of time before Tesco Bank realises that letting people pay huge tax bills in order to get Clubcard points isn’t what they intended. They’ll stop this very soon, and rightly so.

  • jonnyfly says:
    26 Jan26 January 14:17

    T CC Pay+ working for me. Second funding ‘go’ in one day got paused by funding bank (after ‘duplicate’ request) but was released once phoned them. Had previously ‘christened’ the new card with a small supermarket transaction (chip’n’pin). Today have done three rounds of funding in the same day and paid HMRC out immediately on each receipt. £10k seems OK (in and out).

    Previously HMRC had refused the card with an error about the card type not accepted (or something like that) but was accepted a few hours later.

  • Christopher says:
    26 Jan26 January 17:56

    Pre-loading £95,000 onto a card with no certainty that it will be easily and quickly offloaded, for a return of 28,500 Virgin Points is pretty ballsy.

    • Rob says:
      26 Jan26 January 20:48

      I’d be more concerned about the faff required in moving £95,000, given the pathetic daily limits most of us have. Even as super-top-tier HSBC Jade I can’t move more than £10k per day via the app.

      • Dave N says:
        27 Jan27 January 12:16

        Barclays Premier allow £50K a day via then web banking (less through the app – with £10K or £30K I think) – maybe worth checking out the HSBC web banking service Rob to move more?

      • Filipino_Chino says:
        29 Jan29 January 12:05

        I know that Santander and Lloyds have a work around, not sure about HSBC – normally if you transfer between accounts within the same group, they have no limit, so i tranfer £20/25k to a savings account and then transfer the money to Tesco, then i will take another lump from my current account, then again from another account. For my Lloyds i can do about £75k a day, while Santander is about £100k (depends on how many accounts you have).

  • Ramsey says:
    26 Jan26 January 18:14

    Didn’t work when first transferred, but worked the following day for a couple k payment to hmrc

  • Ruth4325 says:
    26 Jan26 January 20:02

    If I have an old and a new style 241 voucher and wanting to book a return to TYO next Spring am I best to use the old or new style? The reason I ask is because I’d like to use one of the vouchers for a trip to NYC in May and I can use either voucher for that.

    • Rob says:
      26 Jan26 January 20:47

      NYC availability is pretty easy, Tokyois generally pretty hard, so the new-style 241 with better availability will be best used for the latter.

  • Andy says:
    27 Jan27 January 00:08

    Can someone who understands this industry explain *why* Tesco would seek to block payments to HMRC? Presumably Tesco make a % on each payment, and presumably they have worked out that that (and any other revenue they make from the card) more than pays for the Clubcard points. You’d think they would be actively *encouraging* people to use the card in this way! It’s paying tax, it’s not fraudulent, nor is it comparable to shady areas such as depositing to NS&I for the sole purpose of withdrawing and recycling.

    • Axel says:
      27 Jan27 January 07:37

      Sorry to burst your bubble Andy, you can withdraw any self assessment overpayments you made in March up to about July when the 2nd payment is due.

  • Simon says:
    27 Jan27 January 08:49

    Mine was blocked from HMRC on the day I activated the card. After calling Tesco Bank they said it can up to 24 hours from activation before some merchants/retailers accept a new card. Tried the next day and all fine. The points landed 2 days later. Thanks again Rob!

  • Rhys says:
    28 Jan28 January 13:26

    Don’t know if people will see this comment on an ‘old’ article but wondering if it is possible to pay stamp duty over more than one transaction. I have to pay about £110,000 but the Tesco Pay Plus rules state that debit card transactions of £100,000 or more are excluded, which would defeat the purpose of getting it if I have to pay the stamp duty in one go.

    • Rob says:
      28 Jan28 January 13:33

      In general, HMRC doesn’t care. I paid my self-assessment in 25 chunks last year to get it through my Miles & More Mastercard. Not sure why SDLT would be different.

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