“Earn Avios on 0% balance transfer / money transfer”

[Laura]

Anyone else received the intriguing email from Barclaycard today? Not sure if it’s targeted or not

0% interest un‌til 1 April 2025 on all balance transfers
(4.0% transfer fee applies)*

Move balances from other cards and manage one monthly payment, interest-free for 21 months.

Offer ends‌ 31 July 2023.

0% interest un‌til 1 March 2025 on all money transfers
(4.5% transfer fee applies)*

A money transfer lets you access your credit as cash, as quickly as the next working day – handy if you need to pay someone in a hurry or cover an unexpected bill.

Just remember that any money that you transfer into your current account will no longer benefit from purchase protection. It’s interest-free for 20 months.

Offer ends‌ 31 July 2023.

And:

You earn Avios when you make a transfer

Collect 1 Avios for every £1 you transfer using your Barclaycard Avios credit card. (T&Cs apply)†

Enjoy flights, hotels and more. Use your Avios to reduce the cost of a flight or to book your stay in more than 100,000 hotels across the world.

Feels like a good opportunity to Stooze and earn Avios, unless I’m missing something obvious?

[Rob]

Looks interesting – you’d easily make back the fee given the 20+ months transfer period.

[Alex G]

NatWest are doing 19 months at 0% with no fee
Sainsbury’s are doing 20 months at 0% with a fee of 1% or 2%

4.5% or more interest on long term savings easily achieveable.

It’s called stoozing.

[lollyfry]

I’ve always wondered, does a money transfer at these 0% interest rates get flagged as a cash withdrawal for credit reporting?

[Rui N.]

No. You are just paying your credit card (and that’s how it shows on the credit card you transfer out of.)

[SBIre]

Yeah, I got it too. I’ve heard of stoozing but never tried it. Sounds intriguing, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort – how much can you make?

[Rich_A]

SBIre wrote:

Yeah, I got it too. I’ve heard of stoozing but never tried it. Sounds intriguing, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort – how much can you make?

1 Transfer 10k cash into your bank account, costs £450 transfer fee, so your card balance is now £10,450.

2 Stick the £10k in a 1 yr fixed account earning 6%, and you have £10,600. Then an easy access account until April 2025. Another £300 maybe?

3 Don’t forget you’ll be paying tax on three interest, and that you’ll need to find the money to make minimum payments every month.

4 Your card is probably out of action for spending now, unless you can get your head around the fine print of which balance your payment is going towards, and making a manual payment every month.

5 Use the savings to pay off the full balance in April, and keep the change and Avios. Or rinse and repeat.

[Rich_A]

4 or 4.5% is a very high fee, but it can be made to work provided the period is long enough. It’s high fees over a short period that’s the killer.

[Rui N.]

You also get the avios on top of the small spread.
But if you don’t need the avios much better to put on a card with 0% transfer fee – if you need the avios might also be better to buy them with the interest you earn, I didn’t do the math.
I already have £15k+ on 0% cards with 0% transfer fee. It’s not nothing.

[TooPoorToBeHere]

I won’t be doing it as I prefer the Avios from cycling £10k pcm through the card to a not-particularly-good interest-free offer.

If the interest-free offer is up your street, compare this 4% (arguably 3% net of Avios earned on the transfer) with the offers at https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/

[Andrew J]

Would doing a money transfer to a bank account affect your credit score/rating?

[Rui N.]

Why? And why would you care?

[NigelHamilton]

So unless I’m missing a trick, anyone whose had to remortgage recently would be better off taking this offer out and immediately paying off a lump sum (then no tax to pay on saving it). As long as you were sure you could pay the card balance off in 20 months time would seem a no brainer….

[Peter K]

NigelHamilton wrote:

So unless I’m missing a trick, anyone whose had to remortgage recently would be better off taking this offer out and immediately paying off a lump sum (then no tax to pay on saving it). As long as you were sure you could pay the card balance off in 20 months time would seem a no brainer….

And there is the rub. If you put it in a saving account, the capital is available to pay off what is owed at the end of the interest free period. If you use it to pay off some of your mortgage you need to guarantee earning enough spare cash to pay off the card in 20 or so months.

It might be safer in such a situation to save the capital to guarantee paying off the card, and earn interest on the amount saved, and then overpay your mortgage with the spare cash you’ve earn of the 20 months. That way any blips in your earnings/expenses don’t put your at risk.

[TooPoorToBeHere]

Yer, agreed, don’t give up the flexibility of cash. You never know when you might need it.

6% available on several 1-year-fix savings accounts at the moment; 2yr gilt yields over 5% (and can be ISA’d if you have an income tax problem with receiving interest); short gilt funds yield over 4% (again ISA’able)

[SBIre]

Rich_A wrote:

SBIre wrote:

Yeah, I got it too. I’ve heard of stoozing but never tried it. Sounds intriguing, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort – how much can you make?

1 Transfer 10k cash into your bank account, costs £450 transfer fee, so your card balance is now £10,450.

2 Stick the £10k in a 1 yr fixed account earning 6%, and you have £10,600. Then an easy access account until April 2025. Another £300 maybe?

3 Don’t forget you’ll be paying tax on three interest, and that you’ll need to find the money to make minimum payments every month.

4 Your card is probably out of action for spending now, unless you can get your head around the fine print of which balance your payment is going towards, and making a manual payment every month.

5 Use the savings to pay off the full balance in April, and keep the change and Avios. Or rinse and repeat.

Thanks for the detailed response – I can see the value, I need to work out if it is worth the effort. I can see myself messing up somehow and ending up paying a fee somewhere!

[SBIre]

TooPoorToBeHere wrote:

I won’t be doing it as I prefer the Avios from cycling £10k pcm through the card to a not-particularly-good interest-free offer.

If the interest-free offer is up your street, compare this 4% (arguably 3% net of Avios earned on the transfer) with the offers at https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/

I hope you don’t mind me asking – how are you cycling 10k pcm?

[Rich_A]

SBIre wrote:

Thanks for the detailed response – I can see the value, I need to work out if it is worth the effort. I can see myself messing up somehow and ending up paying a fee somewhere!

Yes you have to be careful and pay attention. I did once accidentally transfer a balance to the wrong card, putting me £7k in credit. Took about two months to sort that one. I was tempted to just spend my way out of it!

[hawk85]

Just a heads up for anyone that might have taken advantage of this – Barclaycard charged me interest this month on the balance I transferred, saying I did not sign up for any balance transfer offer. The fact that I have an email from Barclaycard confirming the transfer is complete, with a note on it saying “As a reminder, your interest rate’s 0% until 01 April 2025” apparently means nothing to them.

I’ve now had to log it as a complaint to hopefully get it resolved. Hopefully I’m just a one off.

[zapato1060]

hawk85 wrote:

Just a heads up for anyone that might have taken advantage of this – Barclaycard charged me interest this month on the balance I transferred, saying I did not sign up for any balance transfer offer. The fact that I have an email from Barclaycard confirming the transfer is complete, with a note on it saying “As a reminder, your interest rate’s 0% until 01 April 2025” apparently means nothing to them.

I’ve now had to log it as a complaint to hopefully get it resolved. Hopefully I’m just a one off.

Disgusting. Please press for a few thousand Avios as compensation.

[phil-lavin]

What card do you have? Just looked back and I haven’t got the mail. Only mention of transfers is on the monthly avios summary emails which explicitly state avios is not payable on transfers 😩

[Philondon]

I was just looking into this. The minimum payment each month is a HUGE 3.25% of your main balance.

Whereas my Tesco Mastercard who also often offer me 0% transfers (although without Avios) want 1% payment a month.

[Travel Strong]

Barclaycard have always been 3 x higher minimum repayments than most others card providers, so nothing new there. As is noted higher up the thread, this is not a good offer. If you want 0% BT – use a card with 0% BT and 0%BT fee. Using a card you already have in your wallet is rarely (never?) the best option.

[dmm27]

Just noticed that wife & I both have cash transfer offers across both our cards, which would give us ~£16,000 of transfer. So in theory, we could max out the transfer balance and get 24k avios, transfer the credit into our non-Barclays current account that has an offset mortgage thats at 5.8% interest. So dont even need to open a savings account. I cant imagine the mortgage interest rates will drop below 4.7% over the next year unfortunately….