Halifax Clarity Credit Card Security

[scrumpyjack]

I have a Halifax Clarity card, which I got mainly for using abroad, but have recently changed to using a Chase card. I'm very happy with it. They give immediate mobile phone notification every time I use it. It gives at least as good an exchange rate as Halifax. For the first year you get 1% cashback on spending, max cashback £15 a month. It is a debit rather than credit card but pays interest and has a savings 'pot' paying 4% so you can pre load that and transfer as required to the current a/c.

[jaizan]

I have a Halifax Clarity card, which I got mainly for using abroad, but have recently changed to using a Chase card. I'm very happy with it. They give immediate mobile phone notification every time I use it. It gives at least as good an exchange rate as Halifax. For the first year you get 1% cashback on spending, max cashback £15 a month. It is a debit rather than credit card but pays interest and has a savings 'pot' paying 4% so you can pre load that and transfer as required to the current a/c.

If only Halifax adopted some 21st century methods, like Chase! I had to open a new Skype account and put $5 on it just to call Halifax to resolve the problem.

My Starling current account seems to handle notifications and 2FA via the app very well. However, they charge about 0.4% on my forex, whereas Halifax don't.

After this trip, I shall have to look for alternative credit cards with 0% forex charge.

[JohnB]

I don't put financial apps on my phone, so I want another way to deal with them. Phone calls and parts of passwords work for me.

[jaizan]

I don't put financial apps on my phone, so I want another way to deal with them. Phone calls and parts of passwords work for me.

That's fine, but it does not work for everyone.

For example, 2FA by text message does not work in the following scenarios:
(i) When travelling abroad and using a different SIM
(ii) Anywhere with no phone signal.

Halifax should offer their customers some options that are fit for purpose.

[jaizan]

Well, as Halifax are in the doghouse, today I made an online transaction with my Santander Zero card.

This was authorised via the Santander App.
For my needs, that's far more convenient as I am abroad with a foreign SIM card in the phone and it's far more secure as they have a fingerprint to log in.

Times change. A few years ago, I stopped using the Santander card after they sent a text asking me to phone them to confirm a transaction. The idea of racking up international call charges to do that was just ridiculous, so I just used a different card.
It seems they have corrected that error and adopted some 21st century methods.

[BullDog]

I like that I get instant notification on my phone for each and every transaction on my Clarity card. So if anything untoward happens, I'll know immediately and can block the card in the app.

[a4alan]

I have a Halifax Clarity card, which I got mainly for using abroad, but have recently changed to using a Chase card. I'm very happy with it. They give immediate mobile phone notification every time I use it. It gives at least as good an exchange rate as Halifax. For the first year you get 1% cashback on spending, max cashback £15 a month. It is a debit rather than credit card but pays interest and has a savings 'pot' paying 4% so you can pre load that and transfer as required to the current a/c.

If only Halifax adopted some 21st century methods, like Chase! I had to open a new Skype account and put $5 on it just to call Halifax to resolve the problem.

My Starling current account seems to handle notifications and 2FA via the app very well. However, they charge about 0.4% on my forex, whereas Halifax don't.

After this trip, I shall have to look for alternative credit cards with 0% forex charge.

As far as I know, there is no forex loading with Starling - they use the Mastercard rate the same as Halifax Clarity

Our experience over a few overseas trips has been that both Starling and Santander Zero work very well with app notifications and approvals whereas Halifax Clarity is prone to the occasional decline

[jaizan]

As far as I know, there is no forex loading with Starling - they use the Mastercard rate the same as Halifax Clarity

That's what I thought was supposed to happen.

However, I sometimes cross check transactions with an XE mid market rate.
Halifax is always near zero forex load.
Starling is about 0.5% worse.

They are both Mastercard, so I presume Starling pocket the difference ?
Thank you for your reports of Halifax & Santander usage.

I like that I get instant notification on my phone for each and every transaction on my Clarity card. So if anything untoward happens, I'll know immediately and can block the card in the app.

I haven't been getting that. I looked at the app & deep in the menus are options to turn spending notifications on !
Now I certainly haven't been in there to turn that off before, so perhaps the default was off ? Or maybe it got switched off with some global setting.
Anyhow, thank you for sharing that.

[BullDog]

As far as I know, there is no forex loading with Starling - they use the Mastercard rate the same as Halifax Clarity

That's what I thought was supposed to happen.

However, I sometimes cross check transactions with an XE mid market rate.
Halifax is always near zero forex load.
Starling is about 0.5% worse.

They are both Mastercard, so I presume Starling pocket the difference ?
Thank you for your reports of Halifax & Santander usage.

I like that I get instant notification on my phone for each and every transaction on my Clarity card. So if anything untoward happens, I'll know immediately and can block the card in the app.

I haven't been getting that. I looked at the app & deep in the menus are options to turn spending notifications on !
Now I certainly haven't been in there to turn that off before, so perhaps the default was off ? Or maybe it got switched off with some global setting.
Anyhow, thank you for sharing that.

Pleased that you found that. I get notifications for every transaction on the card including PayPal transactions for example. I also tried locking the card in the app to see if it works. It does. If you look at the card locking settings they're quite granular too so you can disable some transactions whilst allowing others. I like the Clarity card and it's app.

[londoninvestor]

However, I sometimes cross check transactions with an XE mid market rate.
Halifax is always near zero forex load.
Starling is about 0.5% worse.

This is really interesting, because Mastercard itself applies a spread to the mid-market rate.

For example (data source: https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/pers ... rency.html) for a transaction on 24th April, a purchase of 100.00 USD would convert to 80.52 GBP if the bank applies no fee of its own. But a purchase of 80.52 GBP would convert back to 100.39 USD for someone with a USD card.

So there's about 0.4% of bid-offer spread in the Mastercard rates. I'd assume that equates to about 0.2% away from mid-market in both directions, though it's hard to be certain without knowing exactly what time of day they fix the rate. It's not impossible that their spread is "asymmetric" to account for more conversions being in one direction than the other.

It would be interesting to compare your transactions against the results from that calculator.