Halifax has provided guidance on why some customers can’t access a service to get an exemption from transaction fees.
The bank offers its Travel Ready service for when a customer is going abroad, meaning they don’t pay any foreign exchange fees when withdrawing cash or making payments while overseas.
You can get the service for £7 a week and you can use it for up to six weeks each year, for one trip or across several trips.
Halifax clarified the rules after a customer contacted the bank over social media, as they were planning a trip to the USA in August.
They wanted to know how to activate Travel Ready, as they couldn’t see it as an option on the mobile app.
Halifax shared some tips for how to do this, instructing the customer to go to the ‘More’ menu, select ‘Travel’ and then choose ‘Add Travel Ready’.
But the customer replied to say the service was showing offline. Halifax responded: « Please note that if you hold our Ultimate Reward or Reward Current accounts there’s no fees, so Travel Ready is not available.
« If that is not the issue, from time-to-time systems may need to have fixes processed, so there may be short term outages and you can try again later. »
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The customer then confirmed that they were an Ultimate Reward customer. They also asked about their wife’s debit card, as the last time they were in the States, the first time she had used it it was locked.
They asked if they would need to do anything to prevent this from happening. Halifax provided this guidance in response: « Please ask your wife to check that her phone number is up-to-date should we need to contact her regarding a transaction. »
In a similar query with another bank, a Lloyds Bank customer asked the provider what charges would apply for their « cash back credit card » while they were in the USA.
The customer asked Lloyds to confirm if the charge would work as a conversion from pounds to dollars with a foreign currency transaction fee of 2.95 percent.
Lloyds sent them a link to an information page on their website, where refers to a a 2.95 percent ‘foreign currency transaction fee’.
Lloyds also told the customer: « You’ll be charged 2.95% of the pound sterling amount listed on your statement. »
Other guidance from Lloyds also warns customers: « Be aware that our fraud and security systems may still stop payments you are making while abroad if they suspect they may be fraudulent. »
