One thing about manufactured spending you need to be careful of is that some banks will charge you cash advance fees for purchasing Gift Cards and other similar “like cash” options. Citi is notorious for this and charges it as a cash advance where ever possible. Other banks are a little kinder, but will charge these fees when they deem it’s necessary.
This can be frustrating because you don’t want to put through a big purchase which might be charge as a cash advance and you also don’t want to put through a little purchase to test the waters as you’ll still have to pay a small fee for doing so (assuming your purchasing a gift card with an activation fee) without earning the large number of points, miles or cash back to off set it.
You can easily avoid cash advance fees, all you need to do is contact your credit card issuer and let them know that you want your cash advance limit set to $0. All card issuers will process this for you, make sure you get a reference number and if possible send a secured message rather than calling to help create a paper trail in the event that there is an issue in the future.
There is one downside to this tactic and that’s some purchases will first be processed as a cash advance and then will later change into a regular purchase. Because your cash advance limit is set to $0, it won’t be able to process the transaction even though it’ll later be coded as a purchase.
Contents
Reducing Your Cash Advance Limit With Barclays
- Call 866-408-4064 (Barclays Credit Department)
- Ask for your cash advance limit to be reduced to $0 or $1
- They’ll then ask you why, use one of the following reasons or make up your own:
- Some banks allow you to fund new checking accounts with a credit card, you want to make sure this is not coded as a cash advance
Other Banks And Their Cash Advance Limits:
- Alliant: Cannot be reduced: 1
- American Express: Cash advance limit is tied to your credit limit and cannot be lowered.
- Bank of America: Has a minimum cash advance limit of $200
- Capital One: Cannot change your cash advance limit, usually 30% of your credit limit
- Chase: allows a limit of $0 (update 12/31/17: now reports are saying it’s either $100 or $20)
- Citi: allows a limit of $0
- FIA: allows a limit of $0
- TD Bank: Hardcoded to minimum 30% of credit limit (1)
Hat tip to Fat Wallet Finance
WF CA limit is 20% of the credit limit.
DP: Synchrony doesn’t allow you to change your cash advance limit.
I was able to opt out of Amex Cash Advance. I was also able to set Navy Federal cash rewards visa to $0
Has anyone ever tried using the Apple Credit Card for bank funding? From what I’ve read the Apple Card does not allow cash advances, so it should be good for this, no?
I was able to fund $1030 to a new Redstone FCU savings account with my Apple Card. It coded to the Services category.
Thanks Eternal Blue. How did you even become a Redstone FCU in the first place right now? Are you in footprint? Eternal Blue
Not in their footprint. I joined to get their Visa Signature. Only their checking account is geofenced AFAIK.
Thanks Eternal Blue. When did you join? It sounds like they made it harder to OOS to join last year Eternal Blue Eternal Blue
William Charles A few additional DPs… 1) Amex does permit you to “unenroll” the cash advance feature (i.e., effectively $0), and if you have an authorized user on the card, you can “restrict access” for them. 2) Re Citi, I was able to lower my ThankYou points earning cards to $0, but my Citi AAdvantage had a $750 minimum.
I was able to lower the cash advance limit (aka “available cash line”) to $0 on my CitiBusiness®/AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® via online chat with a CSR. Process was easy and effective immediately.
I was able to call Citi and lower the cash advance limit without issues. It did take a while to get to a CSR though.
DP for Barclays business. I called about my Aviator Red for Business, asking how a recent $100.00 attempt to fund opening deposit for new US Bank checking account was coded. She said it was coded a cash advance. She knew it was cash advance because on her end, my normal “purchases” showed as subtracting from my 14k “credit limit”, but this $100 hold showed as subtracting from my $2,800 “cash” limit. (or intending to, but we denied it.)
She also said I could not reduce my cash limit to 0.00. She said the cash limit is a percentage of the credit limit, and I could only adjust the credit limit. The cash limit would just decrease accordingly, but not go to 0.00.
Thanks Brett for sharing your unpleasant experience. Gadget posted a DP a while ago that Barclays even manually added a cash advance fees for him…
Please keep us posted if they charge you a fee AND interest.
I hope that you can call them to waive the cash advance fee.
When your $100 charge is posted, you can pay off the full balance as soon as you can.
Keep a close eye on your next statement. If you get charged for any cash advance interest, ask them to waive those interest too.
This is the DP that Gadget on Barclay Brett
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/how-to-avoid-cash-advance-fees/#comment-1074819
Also Brett, reader dizzy said that he was able to set his Barclays biz card to a cash advance limit of $1.
But the fact that Barclays can manually add a cash advance fee makes this more troublesome….
Keep an eye out on our statements as always Brett
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/how-to-avoid-cash-advance-fees/#comment-1238265
Brother pls we need these sections updated if possible. Appreciate all that you do! But I’m sure as a community we’d be okay without hearing about bestbuy deals for a few weeks if this stuff gets up to date and accurate. Thank you again for all that you do much much appreciated
What is inaccurate?
“let them know that you want your cash advance limit set to $0. All card issuers will process this for you”
*scrolls down to “Other Banks And Their Cash Advance Limits” sees that almost all of those listed either don’t allow it or have a minimum limit that is above $0*
Don’t assume your minimus cash advance limit hasn’t gone up since you last called in many moons ago. Some banks might do you a “favor” by bumping up the limit as the years go by. I called in to Chase and I they had increased my limit to $400 from $100. It’s back to $100.
DP. Wells Fargo would not allow decrease of cash advance limit.