I guess this is the direction they have in mind for Tesco Bank? Moving away from traditional banking products and towards fintech-y stuff but utilising integration with their own services (such as Clubcard).
Did anyone know that Tesco Bank had a forum as well? Iâve certainly never heard of it before today.
A member of staff says here that:
Our Clubcard Pay debit card does require the merchant to check if you have enough money to pay for the transaction (i.e. an online transaction) when you purchase goods in most scenarios. However, because we felt it was important to be able to pay for your petrol using Clubcard Pay we have enabled the card to allow one Pay@Pump transaction per day.
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This reward system appears identical to their regular credit cards (I still have one, albeit itâs unused). As does the foreign transaction fee. The most notable difference might be this is Visa while my credit card is MasterCard.
Past performance is a never a good indicator for future features, but Tesco Bank have been pretty good in their support of Pay in the past.
Makes me wonder whether theyâre thinking about culling Tesco Pay Plus in due course.
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Whatâs missing before Pay?
I cannot add my Tesco Credit Card to Google Pay, other than through Curve.
Iâve asked a member of staff over on the Tesco Bank forum and will post back here when I get a response 
Whatâs shocked me is that the only way of contacting support seems to be via telephone! But at least itâs supposedly manned by actual people 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
On my phone that logo is a cross inside a rectangle 
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Iâm assuming youâre on Android?
I am indeed a 
Ah thatâd explain it! I believe the  character is only viewable on Apple devices. Not sure about Windows?
May have to look at this, probably sign up as Iâve started using Tesco more lately.
I genuinely hope not. Me and the missus have got quite used to it.
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I thought I had my clubcard number stored safely, turns out I donât 
just ordered a new card and then Iâll look at this pay thing
I was intrigued and tempted until this
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Maybe, but hopefully not. Pay Plus can be used with any debit or credit card. I donât want the palaver of having to transfer money to a Tesco prepaid card. Iâd just go back to using my debit card and scanning my clubcard key fob.
Itâs a headache being bounced between your clubcard and Tesco bank logins. They just havenât done the hard work of unifying clubcard, pay+ and the bank, which means a pretty grim experience
Exactly this. And I donât understand why itâs been left so fragmented, with each having their own usernames and passwords. Not good.
Pay Plus used to give bonus Clubcard points eons ago, now they donât. They reduced the points earned on fuel. And the final nail in the coffin for me was severing of the Tesco/Avios relationship back in January.
In good news⌠my local now supports Pay properly, so I use my keyfob to release a scan-as-you-shop handset, and pay with my AmEx card via Pay on the watch. AmEx MR points are worth more to me than Clubcard points.
I guess if youâre an avid Tesco shopper without a Tesco credit card, this new account might make some sense.
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I also applied this morning and, before seeing your post, did exactly the same thing and put the sort code into the checker!
I suppose the product, as a whole, is most akin to a basic current account (the ones which banks have a regulatory requirement to offer) but with extra restrictions even beyond that. As shown by the FAQs, the debit card is clearly online-authentication only, with some sort of risk counter to allow extremely limited offline scenarios (probably transit and fuel pumps only) which is quite similar to basic accounts.
Everything is running on the Tesco Bank infrastructure, so it could be a real account if they wanted to make it into one. Obviously these restrictions are deliberate to prevent customers from using the account in an unprofitable way. Real Tesco Bank current accounts (not available to new customers) support all payment schemes, allow overdrafts, and have offline debit cards. They even allow you to deposit cash in Tesco stores, deposit cheques by post and write cheques. All of that was not making money, so it has been ditched in this new product.
The soft-search only makes me think itâs more of an ID check than anything else, and it also seems that the account does not report to CRAs. All in all, itâs basically like a prepaid card except the card itself is a full Visa Debit, just limited to online authentication.
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PS: Another interesting thing is that you can have up to two according to the FAQs.
I might open a second when the bonus period on Clubcard points ends, so I can get a second bonus.
Well, I heard back:
Hi, both Apple and Google pay are not currently supported by Clubcard Pay but we are looking at a digital solution for contactless payments
Massive bummer. The ambiguous wording of âdigital solution for contactless paymentsâ makes me worry that they might be considering something proprietary, such as only supporting Pay+, which would limit mobile payments to Tesco stores only.