It looks like American Express is continuing to diversify into the reloadable card market and have introduced a new version of the American Express Serve card, the new card is green (rather than the regular Blue color) and seems to be officially called American Express Serve® FREE Reloads.
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Differences Between Two Products
Green Serve is identical to the original Blue Serve apart from two key differences:
- Green Serve charges a $4.95 monthly fee (not charged to those in TX, NY & VT). It’s not possible to get the annual fee waived
- Green Serve can be cash reloaded for free at CVS/pharmacy, Family Dollar, Walmart & participating 7/11 locations (a fee of up to $3.95 will be charged for Blue Serve cardholders)
What Will Happen To Existing Cardholders?
Update: American Express made the following statement:
For any customer who had the American Express Serve product as of August 5, 2015 and/or signed up online before August 5, their features and fees remain the same.
There is no word from American Express yet on what will happen to existing cardholders, but I imagine everybody will keep their original Blue Serve cards and then they can product change to the new Green cards manually if they desire.
Remember that American Express only allows you to hold one of these reloadable cards at a time.
Credit/Debit Card Loads
The million dollar questions is if you will be able to reload the card with a credit/debit or gift card, if you can this will be massive news as lots of people have credit cards that earn a category bonus at drugstores. Although I don’t see why the introduction of this new card would change the rules regarding this (although it’s possible that because they are increasing their profitability they may be willing to take the hit on card loads).
Hat tip to reader Octavio and Out & Out
