December 2025’s current account news & offers

The latest news to help you get the most from your bank account.

Here’s my monthly update sharing changes for leading UK current accounts, as well as some of the relevant articles you might have missed on the blog.

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December’s current account offers

Latest bank switching deals

After the peak of nine different offers in November, we’re down to just five available options.

We’ve seen an improvement to the Santander £200 switch offer, as you can now get an extra £25 Amazon voucher if you go via our link.

There’s not much time to get £200 from Lloyds Bank for switching into a Club Lloyds account, with the offer ending on 17 December. That comes with free Disney+ with Ads or six cinema tickets and a decent 6.5% Club Lloyds monthly saver.

Elsewhere, First Direct’s switching offer is still going for £175. Don’t forget you can access a 7% regular saver with this bank. There’s also £50 available if you go via TopCashback.

Nationwide’s switch deal also has the same amount on offer, and you can get it for both a personal and a joint account. There’s a good chance you’ll pick up a further £100 Fairer Share bonus next spring.

Plus you can pick from either NatWest or RBS and get £175 for switching. This is probably the offer with the fewest conditions.

Lloyds launches refer a friend

You can earn up to £250 for getting friends and family to open a Lloyds current account. Each time someone uses your link you’ll get £50 with up to five referrals allowed. They’ll also get £50.

It sounds good, but your friend would be better off taking advantage of a switching deal, especially since that’s currently worth £200!

If you want to go ahead anyway, then the person you refer need to be a brand new customer, and open the account via the link you provide. They must also keep their new account for seven days.

Most Lloyds current accounts are eligible, except the Under 19s, Smart Start or Student acounts.

The £50 will be paid to each person within 30 days of opening the account.

First Direct Perks worth a look

Last month you could claim two free Cineworld tickets from First Direct Perks, and for Halloween there was a free £5 Sainsbury’s gift card. Sadly both have ended, but it shows if you’re a First Direct customer you should be checking the offers on a semi regular basis.

PayPal launches new 1% debit card

Unless you’re taking advantage of the mega welcome offers from American Express running until January, then this new card from PayPal could be the best card for cashback.

The PayPal+ scheme is free and pays 1% on debit card spend (you’ll get less if you use PayPal checkout). If you can earn 25,000 points before the end of 2026, you’ll be boosted to “gold’ tier until the end of 2027. Here points are worth between 1.2% and 1.5%, as well as the chance to get money back each month.

Trading 212 adds merchant cashback

It appears that Trading 212 have reverted to the underlying 0.5% cashback for December, though it’s alway worth checking your app to see if you can get an increased rate. Previously this has been triggered if you auto invest your cashback.

However, a new offer is appearing on the Trading 212 website, and Iimagine will be in the app soon. This says up to 10% cashback on purchase if you activate offers via merchants. That’s the same as what we see with many other banks and cards, but it’ll be worth seeing which retailers appear and if they’re different.

If you don’t have an Trading 212 account yet, there’s a welcome offer of a free fractional share worth between £8 and £100 via our link.

iFast offers 1.5% cashback

During December 2025, iFast customers can get 1.5% back on spending at home and abroad if you use the physical or digital debit card.

It’s capped at £1,500 of spending, which means the most you can make is £22.50. Any cashback you earn will be paid at the end of January 2026.

You need to earn at least 1p for the cashback to count, so in reality that means it’s only going to be earned on purchases that total multiples of 67p or £1.

For example, 1.5% of a £1.50 spend is 0.0225p, but you’d only get 2p cashback the same as a spend of £1.34.

As with most cashback cards, there are exclusions. iFast list the following:

• 6540: Non-Financial Institutions – Stored Value Card Purchase/Load
• 6011: Financial Institutions – Automated Cash Disbursements
• 6012: Financial Institutions – Merchandise, Services, and Debt Repayment
• 4829: Money transfer
• 6051: Non-Financial Institutions
• 6300: Insurance Sales, Underwriting, and Premiums
• 5960: Direct Marketing, Insurance Services
• 7523: Parking Lots, Parking Meters, and Garages
• 6513: Real Estate Agents and Managers -Rentals
• 6010: Financial Institutions -Automated Cash Disbursements
• 6211: Security Brokers/Dealers
• 7299: Other Services – Not Elsewhere Classified

The number before each of these categories is the MCC (Merchant Category Code), which is how shops process a payment.

December’s current account news

Virgin Money increases packaged account fee

From February 2026, you’ll pay £14 a month rather than £12.50 for the Virgin Money Club M account. Despite the increase, it’s still cheaper than most other packaged bank options which include travel, breakdown and mobile phone cover.

Nationwide extends branch promise

All 696 Nationwide branches will remain open until at least 2030, the building society has revealed. That’s two years longer than originally announced. This includes the 91 Virgin Money branches which are now part of Nationwide.

Tesco axes Clubcard Pay+

If you’re using the Tesco Clubcard Pay+ card, then the bad news is it’ll stop working in April next year. The good news is there are better ways to earn loyalty points.

Monese stops free plan

Monese hasn’t been worthwhile for a good few years now, but if you still have an account on the free Simple plan, it’s worth knowing they’ve changed how this works.

It’s now called Pay As You Go, and has increased fees and charges for things like domestic money transfers and debit card top ups.

And don’t forget, there’s still an inactive account fee of £1 a month if you don’t use it in a 12 month period.

Halifax and Lloyds accounts to be in the same app

We’ve already seen increased co-branding for customers of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and now you’ll be able to see all accounts from these banks in each bank’s app.

However, you’ll still need to use the individual apps to approve transactions and open new products.

This might not seem like much, but I think it’s another step to pushing people towards the Lloyds brand. We’ve already seen Halifax make the Reward account completely pointless, while it was Lloyds that launched the new 1% cashback Ultra credit card.

Curve officially joins Lloyds

As reported earlier in the year, Lloyds has officially purchased Curve. Nothing much changes for now, and Curve has been redundant for a long time as far as I’m concerned. But it’ll be interesting to see if we start to see some of the technology that initially made Curve so appealing start to crop up in Lloyds accounts. I’d love to see ‘Go back in time’ and multicards available.

At the same time, Curve’s partnership with Samsung has ended, so anyone still using Samsung Pay+ will need to move their linked cards their Samsung wallet, or get a new Curve card.

Marriott Bonvoy debit cards launch

Two new reward debit cards have launched under the Marriott Bonvoy branding. Like the similar Hilton cards, these are run by Currensea and you link them to an existing current account. Any payment you make with these cards will pull the funds from your underlying bank.

Both cards have annual fees, but you can get points as you spend, as well as welcome bonuses. These welcome offers are doubled until 4 February 2026

	Marriott Bonvoy debit	Marriott Bonvoy Premium debit
Annual fee	£55	£175
Welcome offer (boosted until 4 Feb 2026)	10,000 if you spend £1,000 in 12 months	30,000 if you spend £3,000 in 12 months
Points at Marriott Bonvoy hotels in the UK	2 per £1	4 per £1
Points at Marriott Bonvoy hotels outside the UK	4 per £1	6 per £1
Points elsewhere in the UK	1 per £1	1.5 per £1
Points elsewhere outside the UK	2 per £1	3 per £1
Status	Silver	Gold

There are other freebies based on annual spend, such as a free night worth 25,000 points with Premium if you spend £5,000 in foreign currency, doubling to 50,000 points if you spend more than £9,500.

You’ll also get ‘Elite Night’ credits when you spend £4,000, which count towards your next tier of elite status.

There’s a low 0.5% charge on overseas spending, but you can beat these with many cards right now.

Anyone with the Marriott Bonvoy Amex card can still get these cards and the welcome offers.

Klarna offer debit card and cashback

Also getting in on the rewards act is Klarna. The new debit card offers fee free spending overseas as standard, but to earn cashback you need to sign up for one of the paid membership programmes.

Though the initial press release talked about Premium and Max tiers that would offer subscriptions, travel insurance, eSIMs and discounts, right now all that seems to be available in the UK are the Core and Plus options.

These don’t look particularly exciting right now, but the key benefits are:

Klarna Core

You don’t get much here at all. I don’t expect the monthly discounts to be that special or worth paying £23.88 a year to access, but I hope I’ve proved wrong.

• Cost: £1.99 a month 
• Physical and virtual Klarna Card
• Up to £15 in monthly exclusive merchant discounts 

Klarna Plus

A higher fee for Plus gets you cashback and £8 back every three months, though we don’t know where you can use that cash yet.

• Cost: £7.99 a month 
• Physical and virtual Klarna Card
• 0.5% cashback when you pay in full with Klarna balance
• £8 membership discount every three months at partner stores
• Up to £80 in monthly exclusive merchant discounts 

I’ve written more in our full Klarna card review.

Our top current accounts for December 2025

I always think it’s worth having more than one current account (find out why here) and here’s my run-down of the top accounts to have this month.

1. Best account for everyday banking / app – Starling (review)
2. Best account for bills – Santander Edge (review)
3. Best account for rewards – Club Lloyds (review)
4. Best account for savings interest – Santander Edge (review)