Payment Exception Services & Post Office Card Accounts

We have produced a briefing paper that explains the incoming changes for benefit claimants who currently use a Post Office card account.

Post Office Card Accounts (POca) were introduced in April 2003; but almost immediately Government, DWP and Treasury began signalling an intention not to renew the POca contract which at the time was estimated to cost over £100million per year. Letters encouraging people to move to some other form of banking account have been regularly sent to claimants over the years.

Fast forward to 2021 and POca’s are still with us and used by over 30,000 social security benefit claimants in NI. Therefore everyone could be forgiven for thinking that we have been down this road before and that nothing has changed.

Advice NI would therefore like to ensure that some key messages are clearly understood.

You can read the full briefing paper here.