I have been using Serve since July 2011 - using either Chase or Citi cards, funding of Serve account always treated as Purchase and respective points earned on the funding credit card.
Each month I also make a withdrawal from Serve to a Citi checking account which requires one time a month Direct Deposit. No problems - until today !!
I requested a withdrawal on March 5 - all appeared OK.
Today I received the following email from Serve:
Dear Serve Customer
We have permanently closed your Serve account due to violation of Section 11 in the Serve User Agreement (
http://www.serve.com/legal.html#eligibility):
11. Restricted Activities and Required Licenses.
a. Restricted Activities.
.... you agree that you will not and you will have any Authorized User agree that such Authorized User will not:
I wont list all the points - but the following were highlighted in RED:
(8) Provide yourself or Authorized Users a cash advance from your credit card;
(14) Use your Account, Sub-Account, the Service or a Serve Sales Widget in a manner that we believe may be a violation of any applicable electronic payment network rules, card association or network rules, National Automated Clearinghouse Association rules or Applicable Law;
A quick search on Fat Wallet also shows several posters in the past 2 weeks having their Serve accounts closed.
Going back through some old emails - it seems on Jan 24th Serve sent an email stating some changes in their T+C. Quite possible that the RED terms above were added then - just speculating.
I'll need to make a call to Serve later today, as there was about $350 in the account - not sure if this will be refunded back to the credit card that originally funded the Serve account - will update accordingly.
UPDATE: Full refund on my credit card account the following day after Serve closed my account - no call required.