New Year - may not sound great for poker players who are using HSBC bank credit cards (UK) for online gambling transactions. UK HSBC Bank has decided to charge higher interest rates for cash advances against the lower interest rate for the standard purchases.
As a result of this, the interest for online gaming transactions would be from 21.9% to 27.8%, instead of 15.9% to 22.9%. The further reveals that they will not be any charge levied on other financial transactions like buying foreign currency, etc.
In a statement, a HSBC spokeswoman said, “This is one of a number of changes we have made to our credit card offering recently to bring us in line with the competition.” Also, few other banks such as MBNA, Egg, and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)/NatWest charge at the higher cash advance rate.
On the contrary, banks like Barclaycard and Lloyds charge quite similar to that of their online gaming transactions, which are at lower purchase rates.
Also, there would be lower interest rates charged for third party transaction service providers such as NETeller. This is because the bank cannot determine and negotiate the services of the party transactions and its final destination. Hence, they deem such third party transactions as retail purchases. |
