Natwest mastercard - interest charged on charity donations

The point is that it obviously wasn't made clear to the OP that the donation would be treated as a cash advance. It's not an efficient way of doing it - see my other post.

If the charity didn't make it clear they should refund the charges. If the bank took it upon itself to treat it as a cash advance then they should refund the charges, unless it's buried in the T&C's somewhere in which case I'd cut up the card in disgust!

is your account a personal account or trading as/company account?

I can't see anything in the Just Giving T&C's which say they charge CC donations as cash advances - it does say they take 5% so it'd be a cheek if they also treat donations as cash advances.

Does your CC T&C's have anything about this?

You'll probably find all sorts of people profit from the donation. Did you notice the 5% charge mentioned in the JG T&C's?

Most have started to define gambling transactions as cash advances. Charitable donations is a new one on me.

The followup question is whether the donation page made proper disclosure. If the OP will direct us to it we may be able to judge that for ourselves.

Not at all; it's like sending a cheque by special delivery when you didn't understand that you were using special delivery.

It was very efficient for both the charity and the bank, and two out of three ain't so shabby :-) All we don't yet know is whether the OP was misled or was careless.

Tony

"appalling" that

expected you to

disclosure.

He said he used the Just Giving website. Their T&C's say nothing about processing CC donations as cash advances. It does say they take a 5% fee.

NatWest seem to treat gambling transactions as cash advances but not donations, although couldn't find their T&C's (you probably need to be

3/4 way through the application before you see them).

Oh really? What evidence do you have?

Yes it is. Next time the OP will probably donate less in case he's charged interest etc. Or not bother.

You seem to have made your mind up already. Where's your evidence?

They're not doing it free, and no-one seems to be suggesting they should. That's what you seem to have misunderstood.

If I buy something and pay off the card in full and on time, I don't expect to be charged interest.

No-one has yet provided any evidence that the CC company is not deducting its normal handling fee from the merchant (in this case, the charity). Given that other CC companies do not appear to charge interest (and thereby implying the xaction is being treated as a cash advance) I rather doubt NW is doing so.

But this isn't a cash advance as far as I can see. Certainly when I made a donation via that site in January 2006, Lloyds treated it as a purchase rather than a cash advance.

Thanks. I had missed that. And their web site does say that they pay merchant credit card fees to Barclays for processing and clearing their MasterCard contributions which is inconsistent with cash advances.

In this case I don't believe NatWest determined the nature of the charge. Justgiving says that they clear their merchant transactions through Barclays and the nature of the transaction would be determined by them (either correctly or in error). In this situation I would contact Justgiving and ask them to explain what happened and to ask whether an error had been made.

Tony

"Jonathan Bryce" wrote

Oh yes it is! - see the OP:- Moo wrote: > The response from Natwest ... this sort of > transaction is treated by Natwest as a 'cash advance'

Obviously, it's up to the particular credit card concerned to decide under which category they place different types of transactions.

"Jonathan Bryce" wrote

Ermmm - the OP used NatWest, not Lloyds!!

The CAF bank is itself a charity, in favour of which you make a Gift Aid declaration. When you charge up your account with funds,

*that* is deemed your only Gift Aid donation, and that is the amount you put on your tax return where applicable.

The "charity cheques" which you draw on the CAF bank account are not real cheques, and the (real) charities towhom you issue these "cheques" cannot pay them into their bank accounts but must send them in to CAF bank, who will then send the charity the funds electronically or by real cheque.

The only advantage of this scheme, as far as the donor is concerned, is only needing to deal with one GA declaration and not having to remember all the charitable donations they've made in the tax year.

As far as the benefiting charities are concerned (speaking as a treasurer of two charities), these charity cheques are a pain in the neck because they increase the administrative burden. Only a small minority of donors give in this way, which means their donations need to be treated as a special case, i.e. it's not practical to batch them up, unless you're a huge charity which receives dozens of such cheques a month.

donations,

Do all charities take them? Can't find anything on, for instance, the Chester Zoo or National Space Centre websites about them being accepted as payment.

"cheques"

remember

Assuming everywhere takes them, and you don't unexpectedly find somewhere that you're visiting is a "charity" when you've left your "cheque book" at home! We went to a model village a couple of years ago which wanted us to gift aid our admission! Never mind all the zoos etc.

I can see it being useful if, say, you're paying 40% tax this year but may not in the future, you can pay in a load of money and get the tax relief even if you're going to "spend" the money, in the form of trips to the zoo, space centre, model villages, national trust membership etc over the next few years.

Or that the donor may have a target amount of giving and by giving via CAF it's easy to see where you stand.

It's easy to imagine you're giving far more in those 2 or 3 pound suggested donations at churches and museums than you really are. At least in my case I'd never bother to fill in those envelopes either so they wouldn't get the benefit of the tax relief.

I don't put in a cheque for 2GBP every time I visit a church or museum but instead will put in a cheque for 20GBP every now and again so I suppose I "batch them up" on behalf of the charity.

Even the cheques are "too much paperwork to fill in" for my liking. What I would really like is something like "10 pound vouchers" that I could just drop in the collection box. I suppose I could pre-fill in a number of the cheques and just leave the charity name blank - and leave it up to the treasurer of the charity to fill that in ;-)

In my case at least, using these "cheques" is worth several hundred pounds a year to the charities. Money that would otherwise go to the taxman.

Tim.

CAF do exactly these. I have a huge stack of them which my employer has given me (at my request) instead of the usual 'long service' gift. They have a range of denominations, mine are £10 and £25 vouchers.

Robert