American Express Expands Its Serve Prepaid Card to Walmart (Forbes)
The following article comes from Forbes (thanks for the heads up Addie):
Amex, best known for high-end cards such as its Platinum and Black, is continuing an expansion in thee opposition end of the wealth spectrum to provide banking products without physical branches at prices that appeal to people who don’t want to pay bank fees.
The company today announced its full service reloadable prepaid account, American Express Serve, will be available for purchase at 4,100 Walmart stores nationwide. These Walmart stores will also become a part of Serve’s free cash reloading network. This means Serve customers can now add cash to their Account for free across 19,500 U.S. Walmart, CVS/pharmacy, and participating 7-ELEVEN locations.
Amex in 2012 teamed up with Walmart to offer a Bluebird card which generated more than one million accounts in its first year.
“By offering American Express Serve alongside Bluebird at Walmart, we’re expanding our portfolio of products to meet the needs of more Walmart shoppers,” said Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth at American Express. “Bluebird is a great option for the ‘unhappily banked’ who are looking for a true alternative to the fees and hidden charges often associated with debit and checking. With Serve, our full service reloadable prepaid account, we can now provide the nearly 70 million Americans who are unbanked or underbanked a simple and affordable way to move and manage their money.”
You can read the whole article here. I’ll share my thoughts later tonight. Have a great day everyone.
Can you load serve cards with debit gift cards at walmart? What are the limits?
Yes, please see my answer below. I will try it out tomorrow morning and let you know what happens.
When does this go into effect?
I called Serve tonight (long wait times 10-15 minutes) and he said that you can now load your Serve Card in store up to $1,000 per day, $5,000 per calendar month. I will stop by my Walmart tomorrow and see if it is as easy as loading my Bluebird/Go Bank Cards.
There are reports of successful loads at WM today!
Yes. From me!
Yay Grant! This is definitely a game changer!!!
Game changer due to the increased limits on one trip ($1K BB + $1K Serve) or is there something I’m missing? Will certainly try to load the old CVS way just doubtful that will work.
CVS reloads are cash only now. Most people are only able to get a Bluebird or Serve, not both cards.
I should have been more clear; I meant I would try direct loading Serve via cc swipe at Walmart (how you used to be able to do it at CVS) but was doubtful that would work. My guess is Walmart is only allowing loads to Serve in the same fashion they allow to BB (debit).
So what’s the game changed here or was that just exaggerated? Is the $2K per month of online loads making that big of a difference?
Its not a huge reason to switch from Bluebird to Serve, but it is a huge improvement for Serve compared to 2 days ago.
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Signed up for Bluebird yesterday, can I still cancel and switch to Serve ? How to go about doing it ? Tx in advance
Hey Grant. One big piece of advice that I think you should announce: NOT ALL WALMARTS ARE SET UP YET TO HANDLE SERVE LOADS. I’m sure they’ll all eventually get there, but neither of my Walmarts have even heard of Serve yet. I’d advise people to only cancel their BB accounts once they know Serve will be supported locally.
Hmm it should be an easy software update their POS system, did you try swiping the card? There aren’t any Serve signs in my Walmart but I’ve had success both times I’ve went.
No. I just called both Walmart managers who I know. Both told me they do not currently handle Serve. One was aware of what Serve is and the other was clueless. And these guys run Super Big Walmarts. The one who was aware of it said corporate had told him they’ll give him the OK and the tutorial some time in the spring or early summer.
You many very well be right that it will just work, but I know my Walmarts and they are paranoid to begin with and anything knew is considered a pain in the ass. If I flash the the Serve card I’ll be denied. I’ll bet I’ll be denied for the first month to two even AFTER the tutorial. 75% of the workers are either lazy, stupid, paranoid, or some combination of all of them.
It would be 2 to 4 month swiping suicide for me to switch now. And I’ll bet it’s that way in hundreds of Walmarts as a new card is rolled out to employees whose average weight exceeds their IQ’s by 150 points.
Haha very well put. That is bad news if this is nationwide. What state do you live in? This is the first I’ve heard about this issue so is be curious if anyone else has had a similar experience.
Bellevue, which is a suburb of Seattle. So, it should be plugged in.
Gotcha. Will you be at FTU in Seattle this weekend?
What is that? It rings a bell but not a loud one. BTW, do you have an opinion of the Chase British Airways Avios card and this offer: https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/ba/affiliates?AFFID=kLpbSSXjHhI-RXfdDw9EVI5v54sZYGD7dg&pvid=F522022865&jp_cmp=cc/307156/aff/3-10002092/na
I’ve whittled down my owned cards to about 5 or so and want to go on a splurge of new ones. Citi doesn’t seem to like me right now.
You would have to call Bluebird and tell them you want to cancel. I’m not sure if they will be able to since your account is so new with them.
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Prepaid re-loadable debit cards (account now, Paypal etc)…will they load to Serve with a swipe at WM, just not for online load…correct?
I think the only prepaid card you can load to Serve online is a Green Dot Money Pack, but I have no experience buying those.
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