I do not have any subscription, I do not want to subscribe to any services. I use Trading 212 for investments, for finances, not for watching Netflix.
This will make at least me rethink the usage of the card.
Not sure thereās a better alternative?, ok, so the cashback has to be invested now, itās still free money.
You can pay a monthly donation to charity, minimum is usually a quid so you could max out at a Ā£14 return.
Cashback seems to stack with some things as well, so can be lucrative.
Best Iāve had elsewhere is 5% for the first three months on Amex or 1% from Curve.
Agree itās pretty stupid, itās not like theyāve segregated the card fully from the GIA or allow cash pots, so itās not useful as a bank account either.
Apart from AMEX there are very few credit or debit cards that pay cashback in the UK. See https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/best-credit-card-rewards/ For most of this year if you wanted 1.5% cashback then you have to send the cashback to a pie, so the new terms are not changing that part. I think the only major change is that you have to ensure there is a regular payment out every month as Dougal1984 outlines.
I am sorry but it is not for the service provider to decide how i spend my money or how i use my cards
This is completly absurd
And that last part is the one i have a problem with.
I can see why some will be irked by the change.
I donāt think itās absurd, criteria like this are relatively commonplace. Personally, I donāt mind jumping through a few hoops.
But I think the real problem is the value proposition. I stopped using the card mostly because I found it fairly unreliable and cumbersome for everyday use.
I already use the card to pay my ISP bills so practically nothing changes.
From the definition of āEligible Subscriptionā in T&C:
āEligible Subscriptionā means a recurring payment charged to your Trading 212 Card by a third-party merchant (which is not an Excluded Merchant) for ongoing access to goods or services, billed at intervals of no more than one month, where no payments are overdue;
How do we know which merchant is included or excluded?
Personally, I have a couple of subscriptions and I donāt see why I canāt tie them to my T212 card.
I think the wording āSubscriptionā is a little misleading. I donāt subscribe to Netflix or Spotify or any other entertainment service and I was greatly concerned about being booted. However, it turns out that any sort of recurring payment counts. It even counts my Amazon subscribe and save items so if you are really concerned about this get a tube of toothpaste or something like that monthly as a subscription from Amazon. Or, I can recommend what I had anyway which was the Microsoft 365 Basic package (Ā£2/month for 100 GB of Onedrive cloud storage)
@genzo1977 An eligible subscription is a recurring payment charged to your 212 Card by a third-party merchant for continued access to goods or services. The subscription must be billed monthly or more frequently, and there must be no overdue payments.
Some examples are listed in this article (Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, etc). Eligible subscriptions are detected automatically. If your subscription is not detected, you can contact our customer service via the in-app chat or the t212.cc/ask form to check this further and confirm whether it qualifies.
Voting with my feet - off to Chase with their 2% cashback
XTB virtual card gives you 1% cashback up to 20ā¬ per month as long as you do 5 transactions per month, in your investment account. I donāt know if the same conditions are available in the UK.
Trade republic has similar conditions for their card to those of XTB
No one has asked why?
Why is it necessary for me to use my T212 card for a subscription? My usage philosophy is to put Ā£100 to my card up from my invest account and use it for my daily spends. I do this for security reasons: it limits my loss if my card is ghost tapped. Sometimes, my card get declined because I ran out of cash - no worries, move more over.
Now with a regular payment I am forced to keep a minimum balance in my card account.
While this is not a big hassle, it IS irritating that a service provider is now dictating how I use their service and the punishment for non-compliance is withdrawal of a service that was being provided.
So I want to know what the business case for this requirement is so that I can judge whether it is reasonable or just petty tyranny.
What are the new requirements?
Thatās easy one.
An active subscription classifies the card account as active, if they applying for banking license - and push beyond equities/cfds like Revolut, these are very valuable - we have 1 million active current account customers (look at hints of Revolut IPO price). Itās the same reason some banks will waive monthly fees, or hand out switching bonuses, once 2 regular direct debits are setup - the account looks less like a secondary/tertiary account and closer to a primary account - as T212 arenāt real bank account yet this is the next best thing.
The re-investment into pot increases trade volume, again another great metric for quaterly reporting, and going public in the future.
I think itās fair, itās completely opt-in, if you donāt meet the conditions they donāt give you their money. Believe it or not they get to decide how their money is spent.
Thank you for the reply, kinda what I suspected but my banking regs knowledge wasnt detailed enough to be sure.
Your time to reply is appreciated 