What do you get for £20?
Sweet fuck all 
“Priority” customer support, and the ability to pay £12 extra a month for 1500 Avios. Oh and a different coloured card. It’s more a curiosity at this stage than something I’d actually pay for.
No wonder they’ve opened it up to the peasants then!
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If I knew I could easily downgrade I’d open one for a week then go down to standard. But they couldn’t tell me on chat how to do that. Plus I don’t fancy being asked to make an appointment at branch to present ID which appears to be their process for account opening…
Card particularly nice?
If you ask @JIMMWX it is. I think it’s a bit tackier than the regular one as it’s a weird gloss black, though I haven’t seen one up close.
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Did you actually close your Barclays account then?
A quick note if you did, you’ll need to apply for the current account first, and then upgrade as I explained in the message.
If you try to open one outright, they enforce the terms of the account immediately, and will reject you if you don’t meet the criteria.
It’s only waived for a year for that one specific route to the account, because they’re actively choosing not to enforce the terms for those users. After which, £20 fee if you don’t meet it.
I’ve reached out to an old colleague who still works there and it sounds like the current plan is to open it up later this year. It’s why the wording via that flow is different to what they communicate publicly elsewhere. Similar to how companies tend to launch apps in a single market like New Zealand first to test them, that’s what Barclays are doing here.
I don’t have an account and when I was looking to open one (just out of curiosity) I had a look at both Premier and regular accounts and the Premier application flow already states that you can apply for £20 per month if you’re not eligible (per above screenshot).
I queried it via chat and they also said that one can now apply for Premier without meeting the criteria but that a monthly fee would apply.
Without being certain that there is an easy way to downgrade I’m not going to try (plus I don’t need yet another hard search just now) but it’s interesting. Hope they revamp the offering if they’re opening it up because currently there’s nothing worth paying for.
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Interesting! Must have already started opening it up to folks to then.
Downgrading IIRC has to be done in writing (snail mail), or via telephone banking. You can also CASS out.
I’ll need to double check if something’s changed now from what you shared, as it might no longer be the case, but the upgrade flow had the fee waived for the first year.
Guinea pigggg
Haha, with my 13-14 hard searches I’m not opening a Barclays account just to CASS out I also don’t fancy their telephone banking so I’ll give it a miss for now. Of course they might improve the offering in due course in which case I’ll be going for it if it looks right. Anyway, posted to MSE now 
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Hah! Don’t hold your breath!
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Probably right. Barclays don’t even move at a glacial pace – that’s like light speed to them.
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Got a link?
I meant I posted it to their forums reception was…
Oh yes - I meant to the post on there!
Good spot. Well worth considering if they offer 100,000 Avios again, but otherwise very little to justify any fee, leave alone £20/month!
It’s one of those where it looks better in reality than on picture. Although having said that, the HSBC premier card is 1000% much nicer looking - in both forms
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Finally support Google Pay apparently:
Old news.
Added mine at the end of February.
Still not Google Pay support for Barclaycard yet tho AFAIK.