Update: A reader reports that he tried to add funds with a Citibank credit card and it went through as a regular credit card purchase, not a cash advance. I don't have a serve account so I can't verify, but Citi cards should be safe with Serve. Either way, send a secure message through your Citibank account and ask for the cash advance limit to be lowered to $0 so that if it does process as a cash advance the transaction won't go through and you won't be stuck with a bill.
Serve® is one of the prepaid products available through American Express. Similar to Bluebird, its best feature is that you can use it for online bill pay. This means that any money that has been loaded onto your card can be used to pay a credit card bill as well.
An additional advantage is that you can load funds from a credit card onto Serve with no associated fees (unless your credit card issuer counts it as a Cash Advance). You can then pay your credit card bill with the bill pay. Not too shabby.
Advantages:
- Online Bill Pay
- Loading with a credit card for free ($1,000 a month)
- Load "cash" at 7-11 and CVS
- There are some reports that CVS allows you to load with a credit card and it is considered a "cash" reload - unconfirmed.
- $50 bonus for two direct deposits of $250 or more.
- There are some reports that Amazon Payments will work for this - unconfirmed
- 20% cashback for any "tap purchases" using Isis Mobile Wallet until January 31st. Up to $200 in credits ($1,000 of spending). This works on anything, including Visa Gift Cards or Vanilla reloads!
There are a couple of problems with Serve:
- $1 monthly fee
- You can avoid the monthly fee by loading $500 a month or having direct deposit or having it in your Isis Mobile wallet.
- You can't have Bluebird and Serve at the same time, it's either one or the other.
I don't have Serve because I have Bluebird and I don't want to give it up, if you are interested you can sign up for American Express Serve® here
Thank you YP for the tip!
Thank you YP for the tip!
Posts
