Ally Bank loading to checking at Walmart
 

Figured I'd start a new thread.
Last week (?) Ally Bank notified me that you can now load money to your checking account (they call it "spending" accounts) at WalMart. The little notification says to use their App when you go to Walmart and it's CASH ONLY.

However, on Reddit, someone has tried (and successfull) loading a VGC to their Ally account.
It's in the Manufactured Spending thread for Dec. 13
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/co...hread_week_of/

Here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/co...t=share_button

Note that I have not tried this myself (not sure if I will since they want DL/Phone # and not sure if Ally would have a cow/bird/whatever). I may wait a few weeks to see what fallout, if any, there is. Since Discover is working fine for me, I'll continue to use that, but will monitor the Ally situation.

I'll be taking the same approach as you - monitor and wait to see if others report DPs. As you mentioned this one seems to provide a higher level of "identification" AND the caps are lower than other avenues (1k per day which is fine, but currently limited to 5 transactions per month).

In it's current state, this could be a nice supplement if you're totally capped out via other methods. Hopefully we'll see the caps expanded and it might turn into something better.

I successfully loaded two GCs yesterday. My phone # and DL were required - according to the CSR they're required to verify account ownership when loading via an app/barcode, unlike Discover where you have the physical card. Not that the physical card proves account ownership, but whatevs. The limit per load is $999, not $1000. It's valuable for me since I have to travel pretty far to get to a friendly WM so this gives me another liquidation opportunity per trip. I'll report back if I experience any adverse action.

Nice Wonko ! How many transactions do you typically do per trip? I can reliably do two account loads without any raised eyebrows and can do three at the friendly locations.

I'm ultra paranoid so I do one or max two transactions per visit depending on the cashier. All of the friendly WMs have gone through an unfriendly phase recently so I try not to attract too much attention even with friendly CSRs.

One other note, Ally has velocity limit of one load per (I think) five minutes. You generate a barcode which is good for one load and you have to wait the five minutes before you can generate another barcode. It's probably not an issue since the daily limit is so low but just FYI.

You can have 3 ally bank spending accounts. So, $15k/mo max through this avenue

The issue with the 5/trx/month is that many of us who avoid confrontation don't like to do split loads.

So the max I'm going to load would be $499. So this is really only worth $2,500/month to me.

Also, FWIW, I have only a Savings at Ally, and I do not have the option to generate a barcode. This only works on Spending accounts apparently.

Now I wish I had jumped on the last Ally bank bonus

Nice callout - I'm personally not maxed on discover/one accounts yet, so I'll still probably hold off since this method requires higher ID level (which leads down the route of WM shutdown, however unlikely), but it's good to know you can expand this a bit.

I was able to open an Ally Spending account in just a few clicks, took literally a minute (I'm already a customer who had a dormant Savings account).

Just loaded $500 at Walmart super easy with VGC.

Can anyone tell me, if you're doing $999, if I'm using $500 VGCs, do I need to tell the attendant I'm doing two swipes, or am I just telling them $999, and then I'm swiping my VGC and it will auto-drain and let me do a 2nd swipe for $499? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I wait until after the total has been locked in for that situation - once they get the total from me and I confirm the amount via pin pad I say, "I'd like to split it on separate debit cards" and then say the amount for the first card. They key that in and then I swipe.

YMMV so tread lightly. It's possible some cards auto-drain, but I'm not really certain about that.

have you actually tried this with Ally yet? Or are you just speaking from experience with something like Discover?

Because the process with Ally is much more involved. There’s multiple screens I have to click through on the keypad (do you want cashback, verify your phone number, do you want marketing emails, verify the total, etc) before finally it shows me a total on the keypad itself (this is when I’m told to swipe). This is different from Discover where I never see a total on the keypad itself, I only ever see it on the POS itself (where it says stuff like my total owed, processing, approved, etc). Sorry if that’s confusing.

I haven't tried Ally yet - I'm not capped out on other methods yet, so will probably leave this one alone until then.

I echo ChurningAP. From personal experience with MOs, Discover, PenFed, and now Ally: Wait until the prelims of phone #, ID if necessary, total amount, receipt type, etc. are done and the system is ready for you to swipe, THEN tell the CSR you want to split the payment between two (or however many) cards and how much on the first swipe (only the first swipe for now, don't bombard them with too much info at once, after it's done then I tell the amount for the second, etc.)

I did have a Vanilla MC gebit appear to autodrain the other day on a Discover load when I swiped the wrong card which had a lower balance than than what the CSR keyed in, and the WM system correctly drained the gebit and showed the correct remaining balance due, but I haven't had the opportunity to experiment and figure out if it was a fluke and what the rules are. So there's the possibility of autodraining but needs more DPs.

I have had cards auto drain a couple of times. In all cases it was where I had a card that was a few dollars short of the MO amount. I suspect its some sort of % value.
I think I was short <1% of the MO value. This is not something I wish to experiment with. The cases where I had it happen were mistakes on my part, that luckily worked out