Fees to topup as cash

I normally topup my revolut card using my Santander current account.

A few months ago I topped it up using Apple Pay via Curve and the underlying card was my Santander credit card.

I notice I’ve been charged £13 interest from Santander because the transaction was processed as a “cash withdrawal”.

I queried this with Santander and they said the payment made to Revolut via Apple Pay/Curve was deemed a cash transaction and that’s why there is a fee.

Is that right?

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Have a read here:

https://community.revolut.com/t/top-up-from-credit-card-now-seen-as-cash-advance/136283?u=poeliev

and here:

Yes, some Banks do this now and basically a top up is a cash transaction.

Try to top up via bank transfer to avoid fees - using a Debit not a Credit card may also help avoiding fees.

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It’s literally a cash transaction lol

You can withdraw that cash now from an ATM, funded by a credit card.

But if I don’t do that it’s not a cash transaction.

When your bank rates any transaction as cash advance, which is often the case when customers pay out money on bank accounts instead of actually paying for something, and you want to dispute that, the only chance I see is to talk to your bank about this, unfortunately.

I even if it is related to a recent change of merchant codes for Revolut, I don’t think there’s anything Revolut could do about it since merchant codes are applied by network providers and not merchants.

I talked to Santander about it yesterday and as a gesture of goodwill they have refunded the interest charges which incidentally spread over two months due to the timing of the transaction was costing me nearly £25 to upload £700

I would love to be able to disable all cash transactions from my credit cards. I NEVER want cash!

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SCT Inst seems to be around the corner.

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Disabling cash transactions is a great idea.

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No way the credit card companies would do this themselves, but an industry-wide regulation could do it!

If you top up with Apple Pay, you’ll be transacting with a merchant with MCC 4829 - or catergorised as a money transfer, which is considered a cash advance. Santander charge interest for this service.

That’s exactly what happed to me. Almost £25 to add £700. I’ll never do that again.

Banks are actually required legally to not authorise a transaction when told not to do so, AFAIK. I might try giving this a try and requesting my credit card provider to not authorise any transactions or MCCs that they would count as cash transactions.

The question is whether they’ve even built this into systems