So this is new, a reader reports applying for an American Express card and then receiving the following pop up asking for access to your bank account information. “Please allow us ongoing access to your bank account information.” This seems to only be happening on business cards.
It’s not entirely clear how American Express request this access. That sort of information isn’t something I’d be happy to provide, especially when American Express want ongoing access to this information. I’d think American Express is just using this in edge cases currently (and maybe when they would have normally denied applicants) but that is nothing more than an educated guess.
Update 1: As one reader points out, this is likely part of the new ultraFICO scoring model.
Update 2: Unlikely to be the ultraFICO model as some readers point out American Express has been doing this for at least six months
Hat tip to reader Abey
It’s still there on Personal applications as well .
Just FYI, applied last night (and got approved) for personal Plat 100k offer and did not get asked for bank account info.
Applied today and didn’t ask for any bank information, interested to know what would be the history of this reader with Amex, for me business as usual, my brother applied right after and no bank info requested either, BAU for me.
How about…no?
I haven’t seen this pop up and I applied last week and the week before Thanksgiving.
Also upgraded cards in July, August and October.
Banks are already permitted wide latitude to share customer information with other banks, under the guise of fraud prevention. AmEx can already get your Chase checking account balance, just as Chase knows your SPG card balance. This is KYC. And it’s going to become even more robust and instantaneous data sharing as blockchain gets implemented.
From what I heard from our lending team, this is a way to justify or have a metric to be able to approve an applicant whom otherwise would be denied. It is most likely AMEX changed their scoring model to include this so they could have more applicants approved.
I thought they approve just about anyone who has a pulse in the first place?!
I applied for Amex Green a month ago and this didn’t come up.
When I signed up for Target’s Red Card (debit version which floats purchases until they collect the ACH 1-2 days later) online in 2014, they asked for and were granted my online banking login to see my balances. Not sure if it was ongoing access but I eventually closed that bank for other reasons. Terms said they use it to set a spending limit basically, but it’s not a published limit. When I was spending a lot at Target for some flipping opportunities, I determined that limit was around $2k.
I would think this would be necessary so Target knows how much to approve you for a debit card transaction. If you have $1 in the account, they don’t want to allow a $1000 purchase. Especially since they don’t do a hard pull to check credit worthiness like they would normally do for credit card accounts.
What does this accomplish? As misdirected as credit scores.
I have multiple bank accounts, and money markets, employer & personal retirement, and multi investment accounts. One account does not reflect my earning power or savings percentage. If AMEX saw my “primary” bank screen on finance checkup day they would think I’m poor. Now if they reviewed the paystub on payday with the full details they may think viable customer. I better not give them ideas.
My thoughts exactly. If you’re employed at 100k+ at a major company, even if you’re frugal, you’re probably still living paycheck to paycheck as far as your main bank account is concerned, because maxing out various contributions and purchase plans is the way to go, and going for the employee stock purchase plan at 10%, takes hold of about 20% of your income, as the percentage is based on the salary, but the purchases much be made after accounting for the taxes, so, your monthly bank account income is basically reduced by a whole 20% from this (but the tax bracket you’re paying is still the same, so, it might as well look like you’re making 30% less from this single 10% contribution alone, because the money deposited to your bank account have a much higher tax rate compared to the nominal tax rate if it was your whole paycheck). Etc.
I showed a random bank account I had with less than $10,000 and within minutes, I was approved. I guess it’s an extra layer for some to qualify. FYI I never had a prior relationship with AE, applied for a Platinum Business card.