June 2021’s bank account news & round-up

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.

June’s bank account update video

June current account news

£200 switch bonus with Barclays Premier account and Avios/Nectar hack

There’s a new switch bonus worth £200 – but not many will be eligible. It’s for new Barclays customers who open up a Barclays Premier account. To do this you need to either earn £75,000 which you pay into the account or have £100,000 in Barclays savings or investments.

If this works for you, once you’ve got the account you can add on Barclays Avios Rewards. This costs £12 a month and rewards you with 1,500 Avios points a month. If you were to convert these Avios points to Nectar points, they’re worth £12 – so cancelling out the fee.

But there’s also a welcome bonus of 25,000 Avios points, which once converted to Nectar is worth £200 – much bigger than you’ll get elsewhere. You’ll get the bonus after four months.

You can’t have Avios Rewards alongside Blue Rewards, but you can trade down to Blue Rewards after you’ve got your bonus if you prefer. This will earn £3 a month after the fee.

Barclays Blue Rewards change

While we’re on Blue Rewards there’s been a small change here. You will only be able to get Blue Rewards if you sign up to online or app banking. If you haven’t done this by 3 August 2021 your Blue Rewards membership will be closed and any money transferred to your current account, which will stay open.

However, this won’t impact many people as to claim your Rewards you already need online or app banking!

Barclays is also ending all cashback offers from Blue Rewards on 22 June, but I’ve never been that impressed by these offers. So it’s not a huge loss.

Natwest and RBS add cheque feature to app

You can now pay in cheques using the Natwest or RBS app (however when I tried it I got an error screen). Here’s more about other banking apps that allow you to do this.

Monese £20 promo code

New customers can get up to £20 added to their Monese current account. You need to open an account with the promo code CLEVERCASH21. You must enter this when registering. If you add it later to the promotions tab it won’t work.

You then need to order a debit card, which costs £4.95 to post. When it arrives activate it and transfer some money to your Monese account.

Then once you’ve used the debit card you’ll get £5 added to your account. Spend a total of £500 with the card and an extra £15 will be added.