Barclaycard admits accounts to close

READERS have complained that credit card company Barclaycard has told them it is closing their accounts because they do not have a UK address – and the bank has admitted that it is doing so, but only for customers who have not used the account in the past six months.

The company was replying to dozens of complaints from Connexion readers who said they had received a letter in the post telling them their Barclaycard account was being closed, with effect from June 9.

Manoj Piplani, MD of Barclaycard UK, said: "While our cards can be used in most countries in the world, our terms and conditions make it clear that customers should have a valid UK address.

"Although we can support overseas addresses on a temporary basis, our accounts are not designed to be registered to permanent overseas addresses.

"To minimise inconvenience, we are only closing overseas based accounts that have not been used at all for more than six months. Customers who still regularly use their cards are not affected.

“Also, customers who do not use their accounts, but would like to keep them open, can do so by providing us a UK contact address for the account.”

No immediate reason was given for why the decision has been made just now and other banks who allow customers to have non-UK addresses have not indicated that they are intending to follow suit.

Reader Marianne Timberlake in Dordogne said the decision would be “an enormous inconvenience” and feared that it would “cast doubt on my unimpeachable creditworthiness”.

We are clarifying this with Barclaycard which has cleared up another reader's query on possible fraud by saying account-holders must have a personal UK address and not use another person's address as this would be fraudulent.

Previous article on Non-UK bank accounts (the BBA link is out-of-date): UK bank accounts for non-residents

A fully updated article will appear in the May issue of Connexion - on sale from April 25.