March 2023’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.

March’s bank account update videos

For a more detailed update, watch these videos from my YouTube channel.

March’s current account news

Latest bank switching deals

Some more changes since last month’s update, with only one new offer – though some are ending in the next few days.

The new deal is from Natwest and RBS, offering you £200 for switching with very few conditions, although you can only get the money from one of the banks. More here.

There’s also been a change to the First Direct offer. Though it’s still at £175, if you go via USwitch you can get an extra £30 Amazon voucher until 6 March 2023. All the details here.

The Lloyds £200 deal ends on 7 March (here’s how it works) while the up to £200 TSB offer ends on 3 March (full details here), though Quidco is offering a £25 cashback bonus on top for the last few days.

But ending before that is the Co-operative Bank refer-a-friend switching deal, worth £125 each. You need to start the switch by 28 February 2023. Here’s how it works.

The Santander offer also ended abruptly on February with just a few hours notice given that it would stop. In total it was live for just 17 days.

I’d expect to see deals from Halifax and HSBC in March, and if these do launch I’ll write about them here on the blog.

Nationwide offers 5% cashback at the supermarket

If you have a Nationwide current account you can earn up to £10 back in March and April when you shop at the supermarket with your Nationwide debit card. In fact if you have more than one Nationwide account, or a joint account, you’ll be able to earn this on each card. All the details here.

Chase cashback extended

Chase customers can now get 1% cashback on purchases for another 12 months when their current deal ends. The changes include a £15 cap each month and a requirement to deposit £500 into Chase in the preceding month.

So, assuming your first 12 months are up, to earn money in April you need to add the cash in March, and so on. You’ll be able to see a tracker in your Chase account (head to Rewards, then Active offers) to see how close you are to reaching the £500 required. Here’s more.

Halifax/TSB debit card hack issues at Revolut

I’ve seen reports in the Facebook group from a handful of people experiencing problems when using Revolut to meet the debit card payment requirements for the Halifax Reward and TSB Spend & Save accounts, and even round-ups on the Natwest Digitial Regular Saver.

It looks like there are a couple of issues. For the Halifax Reward spend requirement of £500 (potentially times three if you have three accounts), it seems Revolut can be cautious of this amount of money coming in and out in quick succession.

For TSB, which requires 20 debit card transactions in a month, too many of these in a day will stop further transactions, probably down to a limit of 10 top-ups via debit card in a 24-hour period.

With Natwest, turning on “double round-ups” and sending £10.01 to Revolut will move £1.98 to the regular saver, though it appears that after four or five of these you have to authorise each one in the Natwest app. So as with TSB payments, you’ll also be restricted by the number of top-ups you can make in a day.

So other than an inconvenience, is it an issue? Well possibly. A couple of the community members had a notification saying their Revolut account would be suspended if they continued to do this.

I’d suggest using a range of accounts for the “spend” requirements if you’re going a lot of them, and to space them out. I’ve details on some alternatives to Revolut here.

Paym closes

Paym, the service that allows you to pay a contact through online banking by using a connected mobile number ends on 7 March 2023.

I think this was a great service, but I doubt many used it. And since most banking apps allow you to quickly share account details the simplicity of Paym isn’t as handy as it was when it launched in 2014.

Has the Monese gift card offer ended?

So far in 2023 the 10% to 20% off promotion for gift cards available to Monese customers hasn’t run. That’s not to say it won’t return, but I certainly wouldn’t be paying for the non-free version of the account.

My top current accounts for March 2023

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 everyday spending – Chase (review)
3. Best account for bills – Santander 123 or Edge (review)
4. Best account for rewards – Halifax Reward (review)
5. Best account for savings interest – Barclays with Blue Rewards (review)
6. Best account for 0% overdraft – Nationwide FlexDirect (12 months only) (review)