Personal Reserve
Find out how our Personal Reserve service can help you cope with life's little emergencies.
Available to Barclays Personal current account holders.
What is Personal Reserve?
Personal Reserve is a service that gives you an extra agreed amount you can use if you occasionally need to go overdrawn or exceed your arranged overdraft limit. With it we aim to improve your day-to-day personal banking and help you avoid having transactions returned unpaid — and the associated fees.
A Reserve can:
- Provide you with an extra agreed amount to help with life’s little emergencies.
- Help you avoid having payments returned unpaid.
- Enable you to make more informed financial decisions.
- Allow you to know exactly what you'll pay to use it.
If you stay within your Reserve, all your payments will be met. If you go over your limit, you’ll be charged a fee for each unpaid or paid transaction (up to a maximum of 5 fees a day).
Please remember that the Reserve is always repayable on demand. The maximum Reserve is £2,500, subject to status.
Watch our short video on How Personal Reserve works and read the Personal Reserve FAQs
Reserve Usage Fees
You’ll incur a Reserve Usage Fee of £22 for the first 5 consecutive working days from the day you start using your Reserve.
If you’re still using your Reserve after that time, you’ll pay another Reserve Usage Fee of £22 for each subsequent period of 5 consecutive working days.
Unpaid and Paid Transaction Fees
If you go over your Reserve, we’ll return your cheques, standing orders or Direct Debits unpaid and you’ll incur an unpaid transaction fee of £8 for each transaction.
If you go over your Reserve and we have to make a payment because it’s guaranteed, you’ll incur a paid transaction fee of £8.
We will charge you a maximum of 5 fees (whether for unpaid or paid transactions) per day.
Interest payments
To keep things simple, we do not charge interest on sums used from your Reserve.
But if you have an arranged overdraft and exceed your limit (which brings you into your Personal Reserve), you will still pay interest at the applicable rate for the entire balance of your arranged overdraft.
This is how a Personal Reserve would work if you had an agreed Reserve limit of £2,500:
Representative example:
0% interest pa (variable)
Reserve limit – £2,500
One Reserve Usage Fee of £22 for each period of 5 consecutive working days from the day you start using your Reserve.
Personal Reserve is subject to status and application and is repayable on demand.
Cancelling a Personal Reserve
You can cancel your Personal Reserve by speaking to a member of staff at your nearest branch or by calling us on 08457 555 555 1.

