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Note: On January 8, 2015 American Express sent out a notice to a large number of Bluebird & Serve cardholders informing them that loading capabilities on their accounts had been terminated. For more information, see: Amex kills Bluebird and Serve for manufactured spend
If you use the American Express Bluebird card you may have been (like me) surprised in recent months to find that the “Transfer Money” button had disappeared. It used to be front and center on the main “My Account” page. I wrote about this missing button in a prior post: Where did Bluebird’s Transfer Money button go? Fortunately, in the comments of that post, many readers came to my rescue with various ways to get to the transfer money screen. So, I updated the post with one of those options. Since updating the post, though, I learned that many people read my initial post, but did not read the follow-up changes. As a result, they thought that the option to transfer money really was gone. It’s not.
Here’s how
Here’s a simple way to get to the Transfer Money screen (with thanks to several readers):
- Log into your Bluebird account
- Browse to: https://secure.bluebird.com/Actions/WithdrawMoney
The screen should look like this (assuming you’ve already registered a bank account):
Make your own button
If you don’t want to try to memorize the URL shown above, here’s a good alternative. Create your own button (browser bookmark):
- Log into your Bluebird account
- Browse to: https://secure.bluebird.com/Actions/WithdrawMoney
- Bookmark the current page using your browser’s built in bookmark capability.
Then, next time you need to find the Transfer Money screen, simply do as follows:
- Log into your Bluebird account
- Click the browser bookmark that you created earlier.
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[…] alternative to the old Amex prepaid cards because it allowed bill pay, check writing, and even withdrawals directly to your bank account. With Bluebird it became possible to earn 5X not just for credit card payments and ATM […]
[…] if it happens to you. Personally, I mostly withdraw money directly to my bank account (see “Bluebird’s transfer money button”) so this hasn’t yet happened to me. Instead, I asked fellow blogger Mark Palmer […]
[…] Buy Vanilla Reload cards, load the money to your BlueBird card, and then use BlueBird to pay bills (or withdraw the money back to your bank account). […]
[…] The money on those cards can then be separately loaded to an American Express Bluebird or Serve account. Once there, the money can be used to pay bills (such as mortgage payments, tuition, daycare, etc.), or transferred back to your regular bank account. […]
I’ve had no issues just having a check sent to my wife (and vice-versa) – usually takes 4-5 days. I swing by the bank drive-through on my way to work, so it takes 2-3 minutes to deposit it. If the bank account transfer was instantaneous, I’d see a benefit over a physical check, but if it’s about the same amount of time, I’ll stick to the “old fashioned” method 🙂
[…] If you have a mileage-earning debit card, you should earn miles for the transaction. And of course Bluebird lets you transfer money straight back to your checking account. […]
can you transfer money to other people with your account ?
I have had a problem as well setting up a new Bill Pay.
When I called in– they told me it was a routine security action.
I answered all their security questions but that was not enough they told me…
they had to be able to call me on my home phone –while I was on that phone –to verify it was me. I do not have call waiting so that did not work.
They told me I had only one other option and that was to fax in a copy of my drivers’ license. I have not done so yet as I do not like the idea.
I was able to load more gift cards to my account the next day however.
Besides the ‘Transfer Money’ button being gone, another recent change is that “May take 3-4 business days to complete transfer” has now changed to 5 days. My transfers tends to take 3 days, so hopefully it stays the same.
For some reason the Bill Pay page on the Bluebird website is not working for me. I was able to access Bill Pay on my phone with an existing Payee that I had already setup. Anyone else having any issues with the Bill Pay page?
Last weekend I and another person encountered a problem at the walmart money center arm where we could not reload the second $500 on to the BB card. We both got a messaging saying that a Walmart associate would come and assist us but of course no one ever came. It froze the ATM and I had to go to the register to perform the load. No problems there. No matter Chase cut off the free gift cards anyway so this is a semi moot point.
Regarding the money transfer option on the BB site there are two My Account links. One in the center and another on the upper right corner. The center button no longer links to transfer money but the upper right one does.
I did a few transfers to my bank account. Then Bluebird froze my account and left a voicemail to call them. They required me to verify my bank account by faxing them a copy of a recent bank statement. Once I did that we were back in business 🙂
I am selecting Walmart Money Card like I’ve done 50+ times in the past.
@FM – Any reason why there is such speculation/rumors regarding shut downs related to loading funds back to checking from Bluebird? Any knowledge of actual instances of this or just rampant paranoia as per usual?
@Julian L: Are you selecting “Walmart Money Card” and not “Bluebird”? I loaded a week ago and noticed a software change on the machine that allowed me to select “Bluebird.” This was a dead end but the “Walmart Money Card” route still worked.