Also see:
- Exploring Amex Serve for free money and handy uses after April 16th
- Bye, REDbird; Hello again, Serve
- Seriously tempted by the 75,000 point Citi Hilton Visa offer
It looks like Serve has a new prepaid debit card – and it’s already on the front page of their website.
OBS and NGS (Old Blue Serve and New Green Serve)
AMEX is apparently splitting the “Old Blue Serve” into 2 separate products.
And you can reload the “New Green Serve” at CVS, Family Dollar, Walmart, and 7-Eleven.
$0 “cash reloads” at CVS, Family Dollar, and 7-Eleven… I wonder if you can pay with a credit card?
And New Green Serve has a $4.95 monthly fee – but not if you’re in Texas, New York, or Vermont.
I’m not sure if you can have both products at the same time – or what the split means for Old Blue Serve, if anything.
Aside from the new monthly fee, and the free cash reloads, it looks like the 2 products are exactly the same.
It would be really awesome if CVS took credit cards for the “cash reloads.”
I’d take my new Hilton credit card for a joyride (as it’s one of the only credit cards left that still earns points at drugstores – 3X Hilton points @ $1,000 a month reload limit would equal 36,000 points annually. That’s good for a few Hilton Category 2 hotel stays!).
All of the other terms and conditions – reload limits, ATM fees, etc. are identical.
After switching from Bluebird to Serve then to REDbird, then back to Serve again, I’ll keep my eye on this as it seems like AMEX is still rolling this out. This would be a great way (and convenient) way to manufacture some spend and pay bills you can’t ordinarily pay with a credit card. Especially in the barren wasteland of New York City.
Although if you can’t, I’m perfectly fine collecting my free $240 a year with the Fidelity AMEX.
Mark this one as developing…
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Very interesting! Would be helpful for us New Yorkers!
Wouldn’t it, though?!
I’m really liking the CVS and 7-11 option. So many in the city. There’s a 7-11 right by me in Bay Ridge so this would be perfect. I have redbird though so not sure if I’m willing to let that go, just yet.
I’m confused where anyone is seeing the option to load with a credit card. Existing Serve has been loadable (for free) with cash at all of these same locations. Now it appears one card will simply be charging a fee for cash loads while the other won’t.
I’m thinking that’s the case too, although it would seem a bit pointless for AMEX to create a whole new card just to do that. Guess we’ll see.
Harlan,
I’m a newbie learning this but the offering materials for the Blue Serve card now read that cash loads are each $3.95 — I take it they were free before at those stores?
If so, that is the benefit for those who wish to load the card with cash — a flat monthly fee of $4.95/month or a $3.95 fee each time you do it — where it was formerly free to load???
If that is the change, well, I doubt that many of your readers card about true cash loads, BUT if gift card/debit loads are treated as cash loads — or have been treated like them in the past, well then, it appears that there is another nail in the coffin of the MS spend folks.
If so, the formally free loading of gift cards at Family Dollar and Walmart may now cost you $3.95 each time to load, I guess, unless you have the Green card and pay the monthly fee — or unless you live in NY, VT and TX.
Perhaps this is a way that AMEX is forcing people to choose between easy loading of $1000/month via a credit card which Serve can do or loading free cash and gift cards that I believe BlueBird and Red Card can do?
I don’t know, but it would appear that the Blue Serve card can no longer load cash for free — it appears to now be at $3.95/shot and if so, I would guess that at those places you can load gift cards, it no longer will be free with a Blue Serve, as well?
Looks like they’re trying to shut down the MS’ers, if you ask me. Or perhaps just rake in a little more cash.
Credit cards have not been accepted in any of these locations (for the currently existing OBS) for a long time now. (They used to be accepted in CVS.) It doesn’t seem like that is changing.
What is changing, is that now cash reloads (or debit cards, at those places that are not cash-only) will cost $3.95 a pop, or a flat $3.95 a month (+ the standard $1.00/month fee on the OBS = $4.95).
It also seems like the NGS will not have the fee waived for depositing $500 monthly. (They know that anyone with the NGS intends to deposit at least that much.)
Furthermore, the fee for the OBS is now only being waived for $500 of direct deposit; it used to be for $500 deposited from any source, including (for a while ) credit cards.
These products are not intended for MS’ers. (No financial products are.) They are intended for (and marketed to) the unbanked. The OBS is now for those whose employers, at least, have bank accounts, and payroll systems. The NGS is for those who are paid in cash, or perhaps personal check.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the option to withdraw to a bank account (already made deliberately inconspicuous on the website) is the next to go. More likely, it will be subjected to daily and/or monthly limits, and Amex will start aggressively targeting those who are just pushing money through (AKA, from Amex’s POV, abusing) the account.