Starting on January 6, 2016, the Softcard version of Serve (‘SoftServe’) will have a $4.95 monthly fee. The fee will be waived if you have a direct deposit into your account each month.
There is no mention of a minimum direct deposit amount and probably even $1 will trigger a waiver on the monthly fee. In the past, Serve has considered any ordinary ACH transfer to be a direct deposit. Set up an automated recurring transfer of $1 from your regular checking account to Serve and that will hopefully work to waive the monthly fee.
Also note that residents of NY, TX, and VT will not have any monthly fee.
Even if the monthly fee does not get waived, the SoftServe card is still well worth the $5 monthly fee since it can be loaded with an extra $500 per month via credit card, which is a minimum value of $10. And the fact that it can be loaded with any credit card is a huge adavantage as it helps us meet minimum spend requirements.
Don’t cancel that SoftServe too fast….
See also Six Different Flavor of Serve and How to Remain Fee-Free for all the details on the various Serve cards. It appears that Serve is in the process of shaking up the lineup and I would not be surprised to see additional changes in the future.
HT: Mileswhip
I just got the serve softcard fee email from amex with no exception statement and I live in Texas. I am hoping I don’t have a fee but will need to contact them to find out for sure.
I have some related Serve questions that I hope a Serve Guru can answer. Can you use a Serve Subaccount card to do a debit card load at Wal-Mart? Does this load go into the subaccount bucket? And if it does, are there any issues with “reclaiming” the funds into the main Serve account? Thanks!
No, you can’t load a sub-account card. Only the primary card.
like Chuck mentioned you can’t load funds to any Serve or BB subaccounts. But whatever funds you put in each subaccount, you can always add back to the primary account w/o a problem.
Thanks for the P2P suggestion on CO360, I’ll try that. I tried to link AmzP to my Serve for DD purposes, will report back if that one goes through. I’ve used it successfully as DD funding source; minor complaint about it is it takes at least 5 business days to transfer funds to my AP account but if pushing funds out, it goes through the next day. I just have to give more time so funds will be available on AP when I need to transfer them.
” And the fact that it can be loaded with any credit card is a huge adavantage as it helps us meet minimum spend requirements.”
does that mean I can still add a Visa or MC and load from that
Yes, but only if you have the old SoftServe card.
Be careful though because some cards post as a cash advance instead of a purchase. See the wiki on FT for more details.
What bank account lets you schedule ACH push to Serve?
Most bank accounts need to verify using trial deposits and withdrawals, which will fail with Serve.
Good point.
Well, the withdrawal may fail, but the deposit should work. I linked my Paypal to Serve at one point. I don’t recall exactly how it worked.
the question is if we link our Centurion Bank acct number to another bank, for example, CapOne360, it will make 2 small trial deposits to verify the account first before transfers to and from are allowed?
Does anyone remember if those 2 trial deposits from another bank appeared on Serve that can be verified?
if I can’t make DD work, I may have to pay the monthly fee to keep my SoftServe account.
tried to link Centurion but it gave me the message that I can’t link a prepaid acct 🙁
Yea, I think Cap. One doesn’t let them. Try a different bank.
Barb — if you are trying to do DD into Serve with CapOne360, the easiest way to do it is do a CapOne360 P2P payment to yourself and use the Serve routing / account number as the recipient. No trial deposits or linking needed.
I was able to set up a transfer from Navy Federal to Serve (Centurion Bank). Did a test push and it worked.
Is it still possible to signup for this version of the card?
You’ve been living under a rock?
Never mind. I can see that it’s not possible in the other article linked to in the post.
I’ve had my Arrival+ attached to my SoftServe since before the changes that allow only Amex credit cards to be added to (normal) Serve. My AF is due soon and I don’t want to pay it for the Arrival+.
Will I be able to add another credit card to my SoftServe? Does it have to be an Amex? Will Citi DoubleCash work?
You’ll be able to attach another card (even if it’s not an Amex) to your SoftServe account. For some reason the SoftServe version doesn’t have that limitation of the other Serve products.
@ leo, direct deposit is still allowed, click the link on your serve account for info
will NY accounts still be exempt from monthly fees?
Ooh, that’s a good point. Hopefully they will be. And a couple other states too.
Yes, NY accounts will be exempted.
I got the same email, but a little different in paragraph two.
“However, this fee is waived for customers in New York, Vermont and Texas. Given your current residence, you will not be charged a Monthly Fee.”
Thanks, let me add that.
But didn’t Serve stop allowing deposits from bank accounts? Or there is still a way to transfer funds into serve from bank accounts? Please let me know what I am missing.
I believe they stopped allowing transfers in from bank accounts (ACH pulls initiated from Serve). You should still be allowed to do a ACH push from your bank into serve, as long as your bank allows it.
Thought I remembered something about this in an old email that I didn’t pay much attention to:
“Funding & Transfers
As of October 28, you will not be able to link a new bank account to your Serve Account to add money. However, you will still be able to transfer money out of your Serve Account to a bank account.
If you currently have a linked bank account, nothing will change – you’ll still be able to add money from that account.”
I had never previously linked a bank account since I always funded Serve by credit card, so I thought, oh, doesn’t apply to me. I wonder if we can do ACH deposits without a linked account?