thank you both for the clarification! not sure which 3rd party amex cc you are referring to but since i only have SPG and delta its safe to assume i wont be getting any points / miles for putting $200 a day / $1000 a month through my serve.

i will go buy a gc and attempt to load onto my serve at a walmart in bay area then. if anyone knows walmarts in SF that are friendly, i'd appreciate a PM.
so metabank issues visa gift cards should be safe at walmart then? gonna go check out local simon mall soon to see if they have metabank issued cards.

update. able to load simon mall metabank VISA gift card to my serve. withdrew the money via cash. thanks for all the inputs.

sorry for rookie question, but how much fees are charged if i try to swipe 3 VGC compared to 1? is it still 3.74 each load regardless of the amount of 3.74 each swipe. i didn't realize the 3.74 cost to load plus the 3.95 cost to purchase the VGC so obviously the MS cost is on the high side for now (1.538%) . if its a flat 3.74 each time i load 1500 (3 swipes), then the cost gets down to 1.04% which is reasonable

Wrong serve, get the green one for free reloads. $3.74 per transaction though, multiple swipes in the same transaction would only be $3.74.

Don't cash out, transfer to hub bank first.

yea i know about the green one for free reloads but too late for that as i applied for regular blue one. one fee of 3.74 for same transaction up to 3 swipes is good enough for me. not trying to do huge amounts since i can only do 5k a month anyways. just need to do enough to get new cardmember bonuses time to time.

btw, what do u mean by hub bank? withdrawing directly to my linked bank account? is that safer than withdrawing the cash via atm? i read that bill pay is also not safe? might get my account shut down? i plan on doing a mixture of all 3 just to be safe if that makes sense to yall. thanks!

Just cancel the blue serve and get a new green one. You should be cycling them anyway for minimizing chance of shut down. You can have 5 serve accounts at a time (also 5 bb).

Bill pay is not safe since you'll be cycling serves. cc issuers don't like seeing payments from lots of different sources which is why you use a single bank account as your hub which all money goes into first before it goes out to bills/cc issuers. Don't use your main bank account as a hub and don't mix issuers/hub account. ie: don't make chase your hub bank and also have chase cards.

Not sure if this is true. There have not been clear patterns from the previous Serve/BB shutdowns.

In terms of funding, the order is direct deposit, check deposit, bank cash transfer, cash and debit (GC) deposit, and the last (risky), credit card funding. For the spending, the order is store shopping, online shopping, bill pay, and the last/risky withdrawals back to bank.

Bill pay is the main source for spending from Serve. I would not use Serve/BB to pay any AmEx credit card. But I do not think Chase cares where the CC payments come from.

The main concerns I see is the constant spending each month from the same merchant, like $10,000 to $25,000 each month from GC/SM. Some CC banks do not like it. The large amount of MO deposit is even a bigger problem. That is cash transaction.

I have been unable to load via US Bank VGC online for a week or so.

Serve and Bluebird say my cards are fine and my bank debit card loads.

Is anyone aware of any issues or had any issues loading online?

What versions of Serve and BB cards you get?

The Bluebird is just the Bluebird and the Serve is the OneVIP.

delete

Good advice. If you're not using Serve for BP, how are you getting your money out of Serve?

Transfer to hub bank.

I have Old Bluebird card,
(1) Which VGC (4x$500/ month) is loadable at WMT without any issues (US bank, Metabank,....?)
(2) Billpay $1800 (rent) every month, any issues? (I have been loading $1800 cash last few months to billpay rent)
(I was heavy MSer back in a day, now the 'underbanked')

Noob here so please go easy on me. After reading the wiki and the comments, here is what i understood.
Here is my plan:
1. Get the green AMEX serve
2. Buy VGC from GCM.com
3. Go to walmart and unload the VGC on serve.

Does this sound correct, if not please correct me.
Thanks for the help.

Today my smgc was rejected at a nova wm, CSR didnt tell me the error but if theres nothing wrong with the card or the bb could it be a hardcode