Martin Lewis: Aged 20 to 25? Trick to get a FREE four-year railcard worth £100 from Santander

Martin Lewis: "Are you aged 20 to 25? If so, there's a trick right now that can get you a free £100 railcard via the bank Santander. I'm Martin Lewis from MoneySavingExpert.com and I want to talk you through how you play this.

"Now, this is specifically for people who will be aged 20 to 25 on 30 June this year, the 30th of June 2025.

"And the railcard that you can get is a free four-year, what used to be called a 'Young Person's Railcard', now a '16 to 25 Railcard'. And if you bought it yourself, it would cost you £100 and it gets you a third off most rail fares.

"Now, you can do this as long as you're a UK resident and Santander hasn't given you the railcard freebie before, which it only would have done if you had the Santander student bank account. This isn't just for students though. This is for anyone aged 20 to 25.

"So how do you qualify? Well, what it wants you to do, it's trying to entice you to open up one of its savings products, because it wants you to put a minimum £50 in one of its savings accounts by the end of May – though I would do it right now in case there's so much demand it's costing it too much and it pulls this offer sooner – and you need to keep [the money] there until at least 30 June or when you get the railcard, whichever one is later.

"You also need to set up its online or mobile banking by the end of May. No big deal that one. Do that, you've got £50 saved, you'll get a little bit of interest and you'll get a free railcard. So this is a no-brainer for most people. I'll do some caveats at the end though...

"So if you're going to save, where should you save? Well, that depends on whether you're just doing this to jemmy it to get the railcard or you actually want to do savings with it.

"So first of all, let's do the playing it, the trick system, if you like... I would put £50 in its simple 1.2% 'easy-access saver'. Just open one of those up, put the £50 in and you don't need to do it a special way to qualify. It will know your age and it will send you a code automatically when you do qualify. And then once your railcard's arrived, take your £50 out because the interest isn't very good and you've got the money, you've got a tiny bit of interest on top.

"But crucially, you will have got the railcard, which is why you're doing this. The paltry rate of interest in that account is somewhat irrelevant. You're just putting money away in order to trigger yourself getting the railcard.

"If you actually want to save with Santander... probably its best standard account is its one-year fixed cash ISA that pays 4.25%, which is pretty decent for a big bank rate.

"But you need a minimum £500 to open that, unlike the easy-access saver, which can be opened with just a quid. So, to do that, you really need to be saving properly. But if you want to open a proper cash ISA, and it's a decent cash ISA, put £500 in there and that will trigger you getting the railcard as well. As long as you hold it in there till the end of June.

"Alternatively, its 'Edge saver' account pays 6% interest on up to £4,000, which is cracking. But to get that, you need to open or have its 'Santander Edge' current account, which is a top bank account for those who pay bills. You pay it £3 a month, it gives you 1% cashback on all bills you pay from it by Direct Debit up to £10 a month, and you also get cashback on your grocery or fuel or other transport spending in the UK, up to £10 a month. Again, it's 1% of that spending. So it's a good cashback account, but is a bit more of a hassle if you actually wanted to open the bank account.

"I should also mention that if you're a student, then you get the same railcard via opening its student bank account as well. You don't need to put money in savings to do that one.

"So that's all that done. What could go wrong? Well, one: it could pull the offer. Two: your savings may not track. But the truth is, you're just putting money in a savings account with a really big bank. The worst comes to the worst, you take your money out, and you've not lost anything apart from the opportunity cost of being able to spend that £50 in the meantime.

"However, as I'm launching this now and trying to get it out there quickly before Santander realises that I'm going massive on it and starts to think, 'oh no, it's going to cost us a lot of money,' things can change. So there will be a full, updated article [the article where you're reading this transcript now] in the News section of MoneySavingExpert.com; my website.

"Please keep your eye on that and any updates or details and also, the link to where you can read this on Santander’s page too, will all be on there so you can work out what's going on for yourself in case anything changes. But generally I think this should be pretty easy."