Originally Posted by ed765

From the wording, it appears that the co-branded cards will still be allowed.

The obvious motivation for dropping other cards is that they were paying fees to the issuing banks. I presume that they do not pay a fee, or at least as large a fee to the American Express network for processing the payments.

However, if the Fidelity American Express considers to be accepted, I expect it will get a lot more usage as people drop Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, and direct their loads to their Fidelity American Express cards, or possibly other co-branded Amex cards).

I would expect Fidelity to notice this and stop giving points. BOA (which owns FIA) apparently treats Serve loads as cash advances now (based on my experience trying to use my Travel Rewards card). I would expect the precedent to spread to the FIA cards, and for them to start charging a cash advance fee.

One should watch your statements so you do not get surprised and find that there are large cash advance fees. I believe they are new placing the initial hold as a cash advance, and then the final billing as a purchase. I remember raising my cash advance limit so the card could be used for this, but in doing so I am exposed to a risk that a change in policy would expose me to cash advance fees. I am not quite sure what cash advance limit would permit a few charges to go through, but prevent running up a large cash advance fees. I would hope if there were fees I could point to how they had previously handled Serve loads and get them reversed, but this is not certain.

It is also possible Amex may see heavier use of their cards for loading, and decide they they preferred that those that had newly issue Amex cards make any required spending in a way that generate swipe fees, rather than just to load a Serve card.