Debit to Credit transfer

January 11, 2008 5:06 AM

Can a person add money to their checking account buy using a credit card balance transfer offer online and entering their Visa CheckCard number as the account to be credited?
posted by Pater Aletheias to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Probably, especially if your credit card allows cash advances; it's really the same thing. But if you're not directly paying off another credit balance, they may not give you the promotional interest deal. It really depends on the card issuer, so call up customer service and see what they'll do for you.
posted by beagle at 5:56 AM on January 11, 2008

Do you just need a fast temporary infusion of cash? I found that the overall fees/interest were lower by taking advantage of my bank's system wherein overdrafts roll onto my credit card issued by my bank.
posted by desuetude at 6:06 AM on January 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Most of them will send you a check under a balance transfer offer, as long as you talk to a CSR. Citibank will let you do it online. Of course, you have to wait for the check and then take it to the bank and deposit it.

Your strategy will not likely succeed, since your check card account number is not actually your bank account number, as it is with a regular credit card.

In the alternative, it's likely that if you haven't thrown them away yet, you have some checks that the credit card company sent you that are good for that particular offer. Some banks have a policy of not letting you write those to yourself, however. I know Chase does. I've gotten around that in the past by writing them to someone else and having them write me a check after the one from the credit card company clears. Unfortunately, those checks are about the only ones my bank holds for any length of time. They take the entire 5 days for credit card access checks. :(
posted by wierdo at 6:12 AM on January 11, 2008

Yet another strategy: you may be able to get a credit card through your bank. That's what I do. So, when you go into overdraft on your checking account, the difference automatically gets charged to your credit card. It's all nice and clean and part of the same system. Then, when you have money again, you pay into your credit card directly from your checking account. The whole thing takes me about thirty seconds.
posted by bingo at 6:17 AM on January 11, 2008

That would not work.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 7:51 AM on January 11, 2008

I would read my credit card agreement very carefully before doing this. Odds are extremely good that you would end up paying the cash advance rate on that transfer, which is usually much higher than the promotional rate. Usually those transfer options explicitly state that any cash use of the offer is assessed at the cash advance rate.

Also, cash advances generally do not have a period in which they are not charged interest, meaning that you would start getting hit with finance charges from the moment you initiated the transfer.

Finally, since most credit cards pay off balances at differing interest rates from the lowest interest rate to the highest, if you had another balance on the credit card already you'd be paying off the lower interest rate while the higher (MUCH higher) cash advance balance was merrily increasing due to finance charges.

This is not a good plan, in other words. Call your credit card company with this question.
posted by winna at 8:27 AM on January 11, 2008

You could probably do the following: Link your bank account to a PayPal account, and then do a "request money" to a different email address of yours. Click on the link in that email and choose to pay the requested amount with a credit card but without signing up and/or signing in. I'm guessing this is against the terms of PayPal and probably your credit card, but hey, just an idea.
posted by atomly at 9:01 AM on January 11, 2008

If atomly's idea works, the pp fee (2.9%) would probably be substantially lower than the cash advance fee, but the overall process would take longer -- potentially more than a week longer -- given that the new email address you used would have to be connected to a bank account and the pp balance would then have to be transferred to that account.
posted by lorimer at 11:52 AM on January 11, 2008

what I've done in the past is eg. xfer from Bank of A to my daily-use Citibank MC account (which I pay off every month), which ends the month with a massive credit balance, and then have Citibank mail me the credit as a check that I deposit.

mmm, 0% fixed for 18 months . . .
posted by panamax at 2:17 PM on January 11, 2008