I guess he's trying to compartimentalize so that, if the spending account is compromised and depleted, the main-income one is untouched.

Seems like a lot of work to do what CCs do automatically. I guess the upside is that crazy spending is impossible (well, if you make sure to forbid negative balances on the spending account) and it's impossible to accrue interest.

> well, if you make sure to forbid negative balances on the spending account

I'm unaware of a UK bank that will let you do this, so...

Monzo. It's the default in fact, since in order to get an overdraft you need to do a credit application.

There's a difference between having an arranged overdraft, and being able to have a negative balance (also known as an unarranged overdraft).

Monzo's own help pages explicitly state that your balance can go into the negative, because offline debit card payments will not be rejected. They'll also gladly take you into the negative if you owe them money (e.g. through a Monzo Plus or Premium sub, or use their Flex service).

Search Monzo help for "Unarranged Overdrafts".

As far as I'm aware, there is no UK bank that will guarantee they will reject all payments and never let you go into a negative balance on a debit card transaction. This is also a profit centre for them, so there's little motivation to actually do so.

Here's the help page in question:

https://monzo.com/help/overdrafts-loans/unauthorised-overdra...

The mandated fee-cap introduced a few years ago has (or rather should have) curbed the view that overdraft fees are a cost centre. Banks are extremely proactive now, as soon as there is a hint you'll go in the red they'll ping you in a bunch of ways and remind you of what you can and cannot do; so I wouldn't exclude that some (or all) might now refuse to complete purchases when it would push you too deep into unarranged territory, because they cannot charge you more than a fixed amount, so it would become basically a free loan.

I'm with Barclays and Lloyds, and neither can go into negative(well, technically they can I suppose, but it's extremely hard to do. Any debit card or direct debit transaction will just get declined if it's about to go below 0).

any offline transaction under your floor limit can put you into unauthorised overdraft

e.g. a train ticket purchase from a guard using a mobile terminal

I haven't lived in Europe for a while but it used to be common to issue online-only debit cards (VISA Electron, Maestro etc) for this reason, have these fallen out of fashion?

they were common for a bit in the 2000s (mostly with kids), then seemed to go away for a while

they were very easy to spot as they didn't have the raised digits (for the imprinting machine... old fashioned offline transaction)

now they're coming back again, but still not super common

it is possible if a terminal accepts a transaction without connecting to the payment processor (small, contactless transactions can do that).

Multiple bank accounts, each with it's own associated debit card

If you only have a bank account for receiving money, then you don't really need a debit card for that bank account.

I take it they're separate accounts.

You can basically just sign up for an account with Revolut, Monzo, or Starling and use it purely for spending.

Keep your primary account for getting paid, and for covering bills, then load up the second account with play money for the month.

I know a few people who do this.

I just use an AmEx account but it's a little frustrating that you can't set a spending limit on the card.

Yeah, that makes no sense?