themicah

If you have SchwabOne, you can also open a free Schwab High Yield Investor Checking account, which is probably the best online checking account out there today. No minimum balance requirement, no foreign exchange fees, unlimited third party ATM fee rebates, they provide free postage-paid deposit envelopes for mailing in deposits, they pay for checkbook refills, and they still pay interest (currently 1.5%APY) on your balance.

And you don't have to use the SchwabOne account. If you have the investor checking account, there are no minimum balance/fee/trade requirements for the SchwabOne (you can just leave it empty except as a place for the credit card rebates to land until you xfer them out).

Happy

1) I have brokerage account that has not had a trade in it for almost 2 years. There is no effect on the account.

2) I have a doubt about the points got cumulated for 5 years part.

3) FIA is the one serves almost all brokerage firms credit cards and it is part of MBNA. So now it is owned by BofA. This means the no forex fee clause can be gone in the future, like the previous Schwab card and the Fidelity cards.

4) Rebates on reward cards are not taxable, such as miles and points. However, rebates going into a bank account is definitely taxable, such as when banks offer $100 for opening a bank account - that bonus would show up on your 1099. In the past this part is not communicate to the customers. However I believe now it may be required by some regulation, the taxability of such type of rebates is now on the form of account opening. I do not know about the taxability of the form of rebates that are generated by the spendings.

5) Most money market funds run by brokerage houses would have a minimum balance to open and another minimum balance to keep it free of annual maintenance fee. For a $2,500 minimum balance (a very common type, some are much higher, like in $10K), if you only channel the 2% rebates to that, you would need to have spent $125,000 to reach that goal. Of course, you can always send in a check to meet the minimum balance requirement.

Unless you often have a big forex, the hazzle is not worth the reward, such as another idle brokerage account and another bank account to keep track of.

Mountain Trader

And the checking account with Schwab Bank is FDIC covered, up to the FDIC limits.

ajnaro

About the new 2% rebate Fidelity AMEX card:

1. The foreign exchange commission/fee is 1%, charged by AMEX
2. The rebate can be deposited into any FIDELITY account upon reaching $25. It is not necessary to have an IRA.

About the new 2% rebate Schwab VISA card:

1. The foreign exchange fee is 0%. There is no commission or other fee charged by either VISA or Schwab.

925

What does a credit limit of $10,000 mean when the

offer says: If you qualify for a credit line of $5,000 or more, you’ll enjoy complimentary premium benefits including:

... No preset spending limit.2

And the T&C says: 2. The no-preset-spending-limit feature applies only to Visa Signature transactions and does not mean that all transactions will be approved. All transactions will be considered on an individual basis, including those exceeding your revolving line.

So, no overlimit fee, a chance of each transaction over $10K being turned down, but otherwise no hard limit? So why issue a limit?

925

When they issue additional cards, are the card numbers different, and the statements split by additional cardholders? Or are they all lumped together?

And how many additional cardholders can i get issued? More than 2? 20?

wco81

Anyone have problems linking the Schwab One account to the credit card?

I called the toll free number and did the application for the card over the phone and they Fed Ex'd the card out to me.

I call back and they don't seem to know how to link the Schwab One account, which I created online.

themicah

My understanding is that if you don't have a Schwab One account linked to the credit card, you have five years to link an account or else the rewards expire. As long as you have a linked Schwab One account, deposits of the rewards are automatic each month (just like miles on a mileage card).

All credit card companies reserve the right to change the terms of your card. They can strip away rewards, increase your interest rate, change the annual fee, change the fringe benefits, etc.

The old Schwab and Fidelity cards were not advertised as having free forex. All MBNA cards back in the day had free forex, and when BoA bought MBNA, they jacked the fees.

Schwab, on the other hand, is specifically advertising this card as having no foreign transaction fees. It's all over the website, and is all over the information they mail you with the card (I just got my card last night). Schwab isn't trying to compete with the typical credit card offer. They're trying to get people to consolidate their financial business with Schwab. So they offer checking and credit card accounts with really good terms to get you to sign up for their brokerage product, in the hopes that you'll use it. This is much more analogous to the credit cards Citi, HSBC and Wells Fargo offer to their best clients, which unlike most cards issued by those banks, are also advertised as having no fees.

That doesn't mean Schwab can't still jack the fee later on this card, but BoA's actions in the MBNA acquisition are not all that relevant here.

This is an interesting point and folks should be sure to inspect their 1099s in the spring to make sure they don't pick up any credit card rewards. But I think there's a very strong distinction to be made between a reward for opening a deposit account and a reward for spending money through a credit account. The account-opening bonus is unquestionably "new" money and therefore income. The cash-back rewards, on the other hand, are arguably a return of money that you already had.

How is this relevant? If you want to earn interest on your 2% rebates, just open a Schwab High Yield Investor Checking account (which has no minimum balance requirements) with your SchwabOne and transfer the rewards from brokerage to checking as soon as they're deposited. Or transfer the rewards out to some other linked account at another bank.

themicah

It means you can spend more than your revolving credit limit, but you'll have to pay off the excess at the end of the billing cycle. So if you have a balance of $0 and you charge a $25k first class ticket to the card, you'll have to pay off at least $15k at the end of the billing cycle, since you can only carry a balance of up to $10k. I'm not sure how decisions about approving purchases in excess of the limit are made.

Many cards (including most Visa Signature and World MC cards) work this way.

The card numbers are the same. I got mine and mrsmicah's in the mail yesterday, though, so I don't yet know whether the statements indicate which cardholder made a given purchase (my Amex statements include that information, but my Citi, Chase and HSBC statements don't).

Not sure. I only added mrsmicah to mine.

Happy

Visa Signature, Mastercard World, and World Elite, are cards that are termed "no pre-set spending limit" cards that still have a credit limit.

The minimum credit limit for Visa Signature is $5,000. Therefore, if you qualify for $5K credit limit, you will receive the Signature version, and that would let you charge more than your credit line during the billing cycle. But you must pay back the overage by statement date.

Unlike AMEX, Visa does not give different card number to authorized user. All charges go on same statement. That is the case for AMEX, Visa, and Mastercards, at least on the personal card side - all users activities show on one single statement.

I believe only business cards would have individual statement for each authorized user account, and even so, there is still a summary statement for all the users activities showed together.

Authorized users with different family names may require more additional info from the applicant's part in order to get approved. Spouse and children being authorized users almost always are approved automatically.

Happy

I was responding to someone's post about opening a Money Market Fund account to satisfy the "Minimum One Transaction per Year" info given by Schwab Rep.

This Schwab card seems to be a decent deal for those who already have Schwab brokerage accounts, folks who dont have brokerage accounts and would like to open one, or folks who dont mind additional work to keep track another brokerage / checking account simply for the 0% forex and 2% rebates.

For our household, $5K to $8K forex transactions a year, as long as I break even or just pay 1% of it, I am fine to forgo the additional 2 to 3% rebate+saving annually - it is just not worth the hazzle to open another card / brokerage account / checking account, just to reap $160 a year. I actually can achieve the 2% rebate in another form of value - the City ThankYou Points if you know how to use it, you can get 6 to 8% out of each $ you spent to earn the TYP - in this case I would completely recoup what I would lose not getting the Schwab card. But this is just our own situation. Others would view it differently.

FWIW, Fidelity's mySmartcash account works the same way as the Schwab invester high yield checking account. I have used it exclusively for foreign ATM withdrawals - despite Fido said 1% of Visa network fee is built in the exchange rate, I have found the exchange rates have been extremely competitive, even lower, in some cases, when I compared with the historical interbank mean rates found on Oanda site - used it in many cities in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Canada and even in the islands in the middle of Atlantic ocean (Sardinia, Italy, Meidera and Azores, Portugal) on a trip in April and again a trip in October. 0 ATM fee, so not even need the unlimited ATM Fee reimbursement feature. You even can have 0 balance in the account, and have all the cash in one of any Fidelity's money market funds. It would automatically take money out from the money market fund to satisfy the withdrawal. You could even link it to your margin brokerage account so to provide overdraft protection (but the overdraft would come from the Core account first, that is a totally different topic.) The only limitation is, there is a daily limit of amount for withdrawal, even the Fido CSR could not understand why, especially when the linked accounts have hundreds of thousands of fund available. (yet another totally different topic). That is my only petpeeve on this Fido account.

themicah

I think it also depends on the specific card issuer. At one end of the spectrum is Citi, who allow you to add anyone as an authorized user with nothing more than a name. At the other end is CapOne, where I found it easier to just open a second account than to add mrsmicah to my existing account (they wanted TONS of info over the phone, and the CSR didn't speak English well, and then I still had to call back a second time when no card arrived in the mail after a month--I hate CapOne customer service so much). And in the middle is Amex, where they ask for name and SSN, but nothing more. These are all personal accounts, btw. I think Schwab just asked for name and relationship.

ajnaro

As far as Schwab is concerned, I just opened their new 2% VISA account with a second user and no questions asked. I also have VISA, MC, and AMEX cards, issued in the US, with a second-user who has no formal relationship to me, has no social security number, and is not a US resident or citizen.

safigan

I added a second unrelated user in Canada to my U.S. Cap One card and also to my new Schwab Visa. In both cases, I just had to respond to a phone call from underwriting. I plan to drop my Cap One card in favor of the new Schwab card. Goodbye $15k credit limit and waiting 10 days for my electronic payments to be credited. Hello $50k credit limit and higher rebate percentage!

best

Is this card issued by FIA of BofA? How do they handle apps. when Bof A advised you that with all of your existing Bof A cards credit lines you are at their maximum credit line?