The birds are AMEX effort to get into the very lucrative prepaid accounts market. Not really tied to what the economy has been doing. As its introduction was long after the financial crisis in 2008/2009.

There are the equivalents have long exist BEFORE AMEX tried to get into the market with their birds. AMEX is too late as the existing players have long been established and are still thriving. Of course having been taken advantage by the users NOT belong to the targeted market does not help AMEX at all. Hence the final house cleaning act.

The well-established prepaid accounts continue to thrive. You can ask Mamibear about it as she seems to have really good knowledge on those and their household owns a few of those.

This is just speculation on my part, but CheckFreePay is normally paid with cash. Unless the receiving bank can see that debit cards were used, they may assume that the bill was paid with cash, which is untraceable and therefore could be used for money laundering. If I were trying to launder money, taking it to Walmart or Kmart and using it to pay off a credit card might seem like a good way to do it, so perhaps banks are cautious about this.

In my Citi account shutdown i suspect , multiple payments from 5 diff checking accounts is the reason . The WMBP payments were posting to my accounts quickly, whereas checking account payments were put on hold for 10 days, before the credit limit is increased . When called , they told checking account payment was considered more risker to the comp algorithm then the electronic payments from wmbp, since it was coming from diff banks.

So my theory would be , if you follow 1 single pattern of payment(checking or WMBP) , you should be good. If you mix it , irrespective of volume the computer flags it.

Also continuous purchase of similar larger amounts also are red flags, gc.com/simon.

Dont know how the receiving banks see the payment. As I said, MANY banks use CFP to process their Bill Pay services.

I am sure you agree on that EVERY BANK wants you to use its Bill Pay service as that make you keep your money in the bank's account as everyone has some bills to pay regardless the amounts.

I have seen BofA PUSH Payment shows up as from CheckFreePay.

Now how can CFP being identified as Cash Payment when the money is from a BofA account?

Well, that's not how ML'ing is done. You haven't changed the source of the funds, only the type. Thieves are more likely to be using VGCs with stolen CCs.

I agree with your speculation on using the 5 checking accounts. But the excuses about electronic payments given to you are TOTAL BS.

The Pull Payment method from the card issuer's site, is an ACH payment - the money is pulled from your linked bank via the Automatic Clearing House system that virtually ANY and EVERY financial institution in this country is a member.

Using both linked checking accounts AND WMBP, does NOT cause issues. Using more than 3 linked checking accounts seem inevitable get payments being put on hold until the same account has been used a few times. Just think about it, most people would not use more than 2 bank accounts to pay bills. Why there is a need to use so many bank accounts? That naturally raises flags.

Using 5 linked accounts definitely could trip wire based on the tidbits heard over the years.

Many payments within a billing cycle also is a flag raiser.

Citi only allows 4 payments in a billing cycle when it is pull from the linked bank account. Although you certainly can push additional payments in to bypass the limit.
The counter act from the bank is NOT to release the payment amount to your Available Credit. So no matter how many times you pay, you are not going to "increase" your CL in a rapid fashion.

I am not exactly sure what was the payment limits , but if i use wmbp , the cl increase is immediate and if i use the checking account , it it put on hold for 10 days.

So my suggestion would be , stay with single mode of payment ( wmbp or checking account ( max of 2) ) to dodge 1 bullet.

To escape the 2nd bulled , avoid similar purchase patterns , like buying 2492$ gc.com purchases / 1011.92 from gcm.

Mix up the purchases , dont mix the payments with any banks.

Much of the whole premise of MS activity in the banks looking like ML activity and thereby being risky is TOTAL BS. If you take a close look into the ML activity the major banks were into in the cases where they got caught, none of it closely resembles MS-like activity. It would take centuries to launder the drug money that flows into Miami through MS-like activity. Which is why the feds wanted disclosure on the foreign buyers here paying all cash for high end properties. Have we learned nothing since the days of Capone's Palm Island Hideaway? Real estate is where you want to go to launder your money! For example, Bashar al-Assad's uncle was recently caught in Spain with 500 properties involved in money laundering.:cool:

You're looking at it from the point of what's most likely to be ML. Banks aren't gonna devote time and resources to play detective with us, a very small % of their customers who perform highly unusual activities (by comparison to most of their consumers) like regularly buying and liquidating thousands of dollars of VGCs > MOs/WMBP. The well run banks, like Chase, will put some low-cost & easy to implement barriers like 5/24 and have some other protocols for what they see as risky and/or not very profitable behaviors passed that. The other banks might struggle more or less based on their competence and business & risk models, but bottom line is they don't care to and have no reason to dedicate time and resources to verify that our MS activities are indeed safe for them and not at all illegal.

Also ML isn't the only criminal activity with credit cards and gift cards. Ask any store manager where we buy said Visa & M/C gift cards and they will tell you.

So banks play Kabuki AML for the Feds with the MS folk while still MLing out the wazoo? I'm all for low cost entry barriers to keep out the reddit riff raff, but Chase 5/24 only keeps out the little mice, while the big rats win the limbo game by having the private bankers raise the bar above 5/24.

As for the statement "Also ML isn't the only criminal activity with credit cards and gift cards" you seem to be calling MS a criminal activity. Weez MS folk are offended and say that gaming LIBOR rates, illegally foreclosing on homes, redlining and money laundering are criminal activities, all of which have been condoned and undertaken by our esteemed banksters. And let us not forget that the same banksters enabled criminal Visa & M/C gift card activity by failing to chip and pin their credit cards. Now we have Kabuki credit card security which is a fraud in its own right.

Perhaps we need our own credit union dedicated to the MS folk, where we can take in unlimited money orders, pool the cash, KIVA loan the money abroad and best the banks' meager deposit interest rates. Should we later decide to go bankster evil, we can give United Mileage Plus points instead of interest and have any users dragged from the aircraft when they go to use the points to improve our breakage rate.:p

No, I'm not saying MS is criminal activity, was referring to the fact that there's constant fraud with VGCs & MCs (which is what we mostly do churning and MS with) hence stores and banks freak out and tend to curb or ban such behaviors (because to them we seem to walk like a/the duck), as opposed to spending resources to trace every transaction to see which is criminal and which is MS.

Likewise, I didn't say or imply banks would let the ML fly just because they seem to ban people for other stuff, it isn't either guard big criminals or none. Since churning & MS is what we do we wanna figure out why banks shut us down (figured that is the point of these discussions and not ML inherently), so I told you why I think they do so. Your argument seemed to be 'we are all legal here banks, please look over there at the big dirty ML cash money'. Yeah ok, next time I talk to Chase for recon I'll let them know you said so and to please leave us alone. :D

Yes I just got notification.

Anyone have success asking for a second chance / other way to keep it open?

I've had a DCU account for 2-3 years. Only did incremental MOs to help with spend minimums, so maybe 2-3k/mo for certain windows of time.

I would think I was a really low risk but maybe not?

Were you mixing in any organic spending as well?

Two CCs shutdown by Capital one for past non-consistent expense as per expectations.

1. CC Brand: Capital Spark and venture CC. venture was Dormant a/c and Capital Spark had organic house hold expenses.
2. Length: For 21 months to load Buxx card. No MS from Jan with end of Buxx card.
3. MS amount: $1600 per month
4. Re-cycle CC limit: No
5. Bill Pay: Paid regularly using Buxx Debit card.

Ladies and gentlemen that's exactly how you log a proper DP!
Thank you whoami.

And yet we're no closer to figuring out the pattern. I do very heavy MS on my spark, at the mall, and throw in occasional shopping/grocery whenever I happen to have that card in hand. Been doing that for 2 years.

I resent being told I waddle like a duck. It is a medical condition caused by having several pounds of plastic gift cards in my pockets for so many years. Them stores and banks is unfairly discriminating!

BB Thing was shut down after 2 mo, so lost my fourth 1%. Three is still pretty good. I hit it hard coz it's only good for 3 mo anyway. 6x CL/mo (120k) x 2 mo. CSR said spending more than half your annual income in one month, 2 mos in a row, draws human eyeballs.

Anybody have experienced negative impact on new CC applications for having remark "Canceled by credit grantor" on credit report due to shutdown.

How do you pay? Paying a CB card with a known MS tool, (for me...Bluebird), is asking for trouble IMO. That's what got my WF grocery shut down a couple of years ago, per CSR. As for miles and points cards, they don't care how, or how much I MS. When I cycle those on 100% MS, they just increase the CL.

Strange thing happened - applied for US Bank Altitude card - went for manual review. At the same evening my cards stopped working (flexperks busn and personal). Called them (thought it might be a fraud alert) - was told that account under review and somebody will call. Nobody called, but 2 cards (club carlson personal and business disappeared from my online account, flexperks cards are still there). I heard that US bank doesn't like to give more cards if sufficient CL is given. I wonder would it be a total shutdown?

There were datapoints about people's accounts being shut down during the olympics promo last summer. It was something along the lines of applying for a new card can open you up for manual review.

I pay out of my regular checking acct, which gets fed with MOs. I agree, seems like doing bill pay is the common theme among shutdowns.

yes, I referred to that time. I wonder if it is over or not (accounts closure)- I have healthy balance of flexperks and don't want to lose them.

there is only one healthy balance of flexperks.
zero.

Oh great. You apply for a new card, and they shut down your other cards while in process!

I would redeem them ASAP

Shutdown last month by Digital Federal Credit Union. Account open 3 months. $10k-$13k per month of MO deposits. Bank said transactions were consistent with MS so I was getting shut down.

Too bad. Tell them MS is perfectly legitimate spend and what they should be looking for is money laundering or something illegal.

I can pretty much guarantee you that they don't care.

Why would they care about what some shady-seeming customer thinks about what other kinds of shady-seeming activity they should be looking out for?

It seems late now... I can access account but cannot redeem it - get error " you cannot redeem" or something like that...

Did they actually use the phrase "manufactured spending"?

Have we heard other CSRs actually say that phrase? Its usually "suspicious activity" or "activity inconsistent with our terms"

DCU mentions it explicitly.

Sure did. Seemed like a generic form letter that they sent to many people. Now I have 97 blank checks that are useless :rolleyes:.

R.I.P Bi-Lo Plenti 3x Pts .... looks like they finally updated the systems for variable load purchases. This was a money maker for a few weeks.

Yeah, it was pretty crazy getting 6.5% when stacking this with a Wells Fargo card... too bad they caught on.

Earning $15.10 in Plenti rewards for every $1,007 purchase + 6,042 HHonors Pts :D

Did you had countable Organic transactions along with MS deposits?