Chime just sent out an email (pic below) with a few updates for the new and improved account coming on February 10, to be called the ‘Chime Deposit Account.’ All accounts will automatically be upgraded to become Chime Deposit Accounts.
The main update that has importance to use is that they’re stopping the $5.95 inactivity fee. No need to worry anymore about creating activity so as to keep the card free.
I just did a transaction to keep myself fee-free – happy to hear that we can forget about doing those now. It may be time to just close down the account already as it hasn’t been useful recently, but I’ve been keeping it open for now.
I got excited for a moment about the 10% savings bonus, but it’s will be hard to game as it’s only on purchases. 🙂
Also interesting is that Chime will now have a routing/account number which can be used to pay things like credit card bills, etc. And they now have many fee-free ATM’s.
Chime is starting to sound more and more like a real competitive prepaid card for someone who needs one. For our purposes, the inactivity fee part is the main thing interesting here.
I am not familiar with this card. What is the benefit of having it? I did not see any interesting promises on their sign up page.
They have special promo offers “comparable” to Amex Sync offers. Spend X at retailer Y and get Z back. Other than that it can be funded with a debit card online which comes in handy at times…
Can it be funded online with NW Buxx?
I think there’s a loading fee for “smaller banks” debit cards or basically any non-traditional bank issuers but I’m not sure about that. For my credit union debit card there’s no fee to load. Anyway why would you wanna do that? The NW Buxx card has become obsolete just a few days ago…
Can I fund Chime with a PayPal Business DebitCard? If so that’s a free unlimited 1% cash back…
That is great news! The only reason I have a Chime card is to create PIN-less debit transactions for my credit union card… Now when I can bill pay credit cards with that account, I can stop liquidating those loaded funds with cashback from the register 😉
Good to know people will be able to benefit from the other changes as well.
Sorry to share bad news, but you can’t use Chime for that purpose any more. According to the new “Support” page, “You can deposit funds to your Spending Account with an external debit card that is in your name. Deposits made using an external debit card are limited to 3 times total for the lifetime of the account.”
I was using Chime for the same reason.
Do you have any other good “tools” to generate PIN-less debit transactions (other than Amazon)?
Can you pls elaborate that? Does load from Debit Card come with a fee?
Previously, you were able to load the Chime card with a debit card (without paying a fee). You could use this feature to generate lots of debit transactions (which are required for many high-interest checking accounts). You would then “unload” the funds by using the Chime bill-pay service.
According to the new rules, you can only load with a debit card 3 times total (I don’t think there is a fee).
You lost me here Jamie!
1. creating PIN-less debit transactions for high interest accounts usually entails having the debit card in your name
2. since when does Chime have a bill-pay feature? It has a virtual checkbook in case that’s what you mean? But seriously it’s a retarded way of paying bills when you’re used to the BB/Serve platform. Cashback at the register is way more convenient.
3. Where are you reading that 3rd party debit cards are limited to three uses? On the support page it says “At this time, we can only allow linking a debit card that is in your name and is registered to the same address as your Spending Account.” meaning you can’t use them at all…
Now with the new “real” account number makes it even easier to pull money out of the account by using it on any credit card issuer’s site as a payment account. I’ll try to see what happens when I add this account to my regular checking and try to ACH pull from that. Or has anybody tried that already?
I’ll explain how I used Chime and hopefully that will help to clarify things. I have two different checking accounts that pay me a high interest rate on deposits only if I have 12 or more debit card transactions each month. I linked both of those debit cards to my Chime account and used them to load Chime 24 times per month (12 for each debit card) which allowed me to meet the monthly requirements for higher interest from those banks. I then used Chime’s virtual checkbook to pay one of my bills and liquidate the previous month’s loads.
This is no longer possible. If you go to the “Support” link and type the question, “How do I add money” the answer states, “You can deposit funds to your Spending Account with an external debit card that is in your name. Deposits made using an external debit card are limited to 3 times total for the lifetime of the account.”
WTF! Just went to the transfers page and made a load using my regular credit union debit card like I always have and it didn’t say anything about these limits. I’ve just sent them an email asking to clarify on this.
I actually sent you guys an email about this over a month ago
Really? Which e-mail did you send it to? I might have missed it when I was working long hours with my office job.
I believe I used the contact us link. Chime sent me the email on 11/11 so it was around then