The American Express Serve card is almost fee-free, but it does have a $1 monthly fee if you didn’t load it with $500 within the past month. And the SoftServe card now has a $4.95 monthly fee which is not waived with $500+ per month in loads.
The good news is that all Serve accounts can get their monthly fee waived with direct deposit, and ACH bank transfers have been working as direct deposits to have the fee waived. Even a $1 ACH transfer will do the trick in my experience, and this can easily be automated from your regular checking account so that it goes out on its own each month. In this case, I believe the month goes based on the calendar month.
The official language on the Amex site is vague as to whether the direct deposit needs to be $500 or any amount (see this post), but, in practice, any amount has been working. That has been my experience and that of others. (1, 2, 3)
Another workaround mentioned is to keep the balance on the prepaid card at $0, and then no fee is charged, apparently. (1)
Since the demise of REDbird, many people have been adding OneVIP Serve cards to their arsenal, one per SSN, and don’t necessarily make use of each card every month. Instead of juggling multiple prepaid cards at Walmart and making sure to load $500 on each, just automate a monthly $1 ACH transfer from your regular checking account and you won’t have to think about it. Or keep the balance on the card at $0.
For regular Serve cards, this is a saving of $1 per month (hey, every bit counts!), and for SoftServe, it’s a savings of $4.95 per month. Note that residents of New York, Texas, and Vermont do not have a monthly fee on any Serve account.
See specific data points for direct deposits on Serve here.
