imutual.co.uk

Just received an e-mail from Tesco Bank Credit Card with an offer to receive a £25 gift card for joining Tesco Clubcard Pay+ by 12 May 2022. This offer doesn't appear on their website and the link they provided is unique/personalised, so I won't post it here, but hopefully anyone else interested in the £25 incentive might have received the same invitation e-mail.

So, what is Tesco Clubcard Pay+?

It looks like some combination of Tesco Bank account, Visa debit card and banking app.

Tesco Clubcard Pay+
https://www.tesco.com/zones/clubcard-pay-plus

I've not found any fee details on those pages, so presumably it's currently free!

Their branding is quite a mess; the new Tesco Clubcard Pay+ could so easily be confused with these different but similar named services that also exist...

Tesco Pay+
https://www.tesco.com/zones/pay-plus

Tesco Clubcard Plus
https://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard-plus

I also rec'd this and yes it is a personalised link and they make it clear in the email that the voucher is not available unless you are invited and use the link in the email.

In their efforts to innovate and to try and compete they have made things very complicated. I will not be making use of the link.

I encountered multiple faults while getting this account up and running. It can use Open Banking for top-up payments, yet this failed both times I tried it, despite initially reporting success (somewhat alarming, but no payments were actually taken). My debit card doesn't seem to be activated properly; it isn't recognised at the Tesco checkout.

Thankfully the £25 gift just arrived, so it no longer matters if I go swiftly to the exit now.

£30 at TCB for sign-ups (although I've had to submit a claim for mine)

Slightly annoyingly the app started nagging me to activate my card several days before the card arrived

Yeah, it did that for me too. Once the card arrived, it failed to activate successfully, the app stopped asking and I can't even find an option to manually try again, so my card has never worked. I could hopefully call Tesco Bank to resolve this mess, or since they've already paid the incentive, simply close the account.

It's a bit clunky in use. On the self-checkouts, the card-reader didn't recognise it as a clubcard until the actual payment screen. So you have the slightly unnerving experience of clubcard prices not being applied until payment is going through.

As an idea I feel it's already dead in the water and these short-term promos are simply propping it up longer than perhaps they should. I had a 250 bonus points for a £5 spend one a month or so back.

But that won't stop me doing them all.

Even worse. Tried to pay for shopping more than the balance on the card - declined. No surprise there - but no facility on the self checkouts or app for part payment. Then paid part with a gift card and still declined because it was requesting the full amount.

At least the claim at TCB was resolved and paid out quickly.