Martin Lewis is urging people to grab up to £1,525 of free cash from seven banks now – with many paying the money in time for Christmas. Various banks from Barclays to Natwest to Nationwide, First Direct and others are offering cash incentives of between £175 and £400 per account to try to get customers to swap to their accounts in the run up to Christmas.
There’s no catch, though some banks want you to pay in a certain amount per month to give you their deals, and you can switch in just seven days automatically.
Martin told his ITVX audience on Tuesday, November 18, that some people – including two viewers in his audience – have made well over £1,000 from bank switching because there’s no limit on how many times you can do it.
Martin said: “There are seven accounts currently willing to pay new switchers money to switch to it.
“…We’ve got the biggest ever deal we’ve seen at the moment, £400 for fee but only for high earners, you have to be earning over £75,000 or have £100,000 with Barclays on Barclays Premier.”
Martin said many will be paid by Christmas, with some after Christmas.
Deals Martin ran his viewers through also included a free £200 from Santander. The account comes with a £3 per month fee but gives 1% cashback on bills up to £10 a month, so it more than pays for itself.
Barclays’ regular, non-premium account also gives £200. This comes with a £5 a month fee for its Blue Rewards but you can cancel without hassle without having to pay the fees once you get the £200 cash.
Club Lloyds will give £200 if you pay in a minimum of £2,000 a month, while First Direct is offering £175 with a minimum £1,000 a month pay-in
Nationwide is also offering a free £175, paid by December 6, while NatWest offers the same, paid by Boxing Day, November 26.
All of the details of each account are available on Martin Lewis’s show on ITVX.
About the switching, Martin added: “First of all, you must use the 7 working day Switch Service.
“Now that in practice takes 10 days because it’s 7 working days.”
Martin explained that it closes your old account for you, and then moves the money and any standing orders and Direct Debits across, with the exception of subscriptions that you pay via a debit card number, such as for Netflix or Disney Plus. For these, you will simply need to update your card details once the switch is complete, which takes only a few minutes.
Martin added that you can very much grab multiple bank switch offers on top of one another, and heard from members of his ITV studio audience who have made more than £1,000 by constantly switching a spare bank account, known as a ‘mule’ account, which is not illegal and cannot get you ‘blacklisted’.
Martin added: “There’s no such thing as a blacklist and there are people out there who have made well over £1,000 just from switching bank accounts, they use a thing called a mule account, which is where you set up a dummy account just to port, and you can use a spreadsheet to make sure you’re doing it right or whatever.
“Two people [here] have made over £1,000.”
The only consideration is that if you do a lot of switches in a short space of time, it can impact your ‘credit worthiness’, so don’t do it if you’re just about to renew a mortgage or take out a big ticket loan.
The Martin Lewis Money Show Live Christmas Special, originally broadcast on November 18, is still available to watch via ITVX.
