Santander Standing Order: Fill & Download for Free

Customers can also earn monthly interest on their Santander 123 Current Account balance of up to 0.60% AER/Gross (variable). It takes up to seven days for Santander to switch from another bank or building society and they will move your Direct Debits, standing orders and salary.

If you have a decent amount of cash or earn enough, then absolutely, however it depends where you live (which country) and what goodies your banks will offer you. Be careful of bank fees and only pay them where the benefit outweighs the fee.I’ll give the UK response, but other countries may similar offerings.Interest - in the UK, current accounts (aka checking accounts in the USA) pay relative high rates of interest compared to savings accounts. However, there are limits on how much of your money will receive the interest and there are usually hoops you have to jump through to get it. I’ll come back to this point below.Rewards - banks will offer benefits beyond interest to attract your money. This can be in the form of movie tickets, travel insurance, phone insurance, discounts vouchers, free magazine subscriptions and so on.Cashback - some banks will pay you 1, 2 or 3% back for paying certain bill types from your account e.g. gas/electric bill, mobile phone bill, satellite/cable bill etc.Access to other accounts - when you open accounts with multiple banks, you can open other accounts very easily (especially with online banking). This allows you to have them open in minutes rather than days. Yes, I appreciate you could probably get them anyway, but having an account with a bank and wanting to open another, speeds things up.So back to the jumping through hoops point from above. In order to get any of the benefits from banks, you need to do what they want you to do.This can be in the form of having to fund the account with a minimum amount of money, paying a specific number of bills by direct debit from the account, or to maintain a minimum balance. There may be others I’ve missed.These can be played to your advantage if you know how to set up standing orders and work out which account pays which.For example, Santander 123 will pay 1.5% interest on a balance of up to £20,000, but requires a minimum input of £500 per month and 2 direct debits, but charges a fee of £5 per month. Santander gives cashback on certain bills paid bby direct debit. The Club Lloyds Account requires £1500 per month to paid into the account (otherwise £3 per month is charged) and will pay 1.5% interest on balances up to £5000, plus a choice of movie tickets or other extras.One way to play this would be to have your salary paid into Lloyds (assuming £1500+), pay two bills from the account - but not ones that would attract cashback from Santander. Keep a balance of £5000 if possible, but not much more. Pay £500 or more into Santander, pay the remainder of direct debits from this account, grab the cashback, interest etc.If your cashflow balance is high enough with both banks, then you can extend the principle to other banks that pay interest and provide benefits, providing you don’t end up paying too much in fees.It takes a small amount of work to set up but once the standing orders are working, you just need to watch the balances are maintained.

All big banks are much of a muchness i.e. about as good/bad as each other. If Santander is the most convenient bank for you go for it.What you need to remember is that it is up to you to conduct the use of your account properly and within the terms set down by the bank and agreed to by you when you open the account. So don’t try obtaining cash when you know there aren’t enough funds on the account or using your debit card to buy something in the same situation. It both cases the transaction won’t be authorised.It is YOUR responsibility to make sure you have funds available for all transactions. There is no point complaining to them if they refuse to pay a standing order or direct debit if there are not enough funds to do so. It is the real world and you have to look after your own affairs.So do things properly and have a nice easy life and enjoy yourself. Good luck!