How to transfer money from one credit card to another?

September 13, 2022 3:05 PM

How do I transfer a refund from Master Card (Bank of America) to Discover card funds to apply to a Discover card bill?

After much back-and-forthing and a great deal of patience, we were able to get a refund from an unusable rental car. (My husband had reserved a car to pick up at O'Hare Airport, and found that he could drive the car in Illinois and Wisconsin, but was not permited to drive in Michigan, which he needed to do.) With great relief, at long last, we got the expense, nearly $600, refunded to our MasterCard. Since we are unhappy generally with B of A's credit card policies, we intend to cancel the MasterCard, so we'd like to transfer (somehow, if at all possible) the money to our Discover Card. Are there ways to do this?

Thanks so much, hive mind

posted by ragtimepiano to Work & Money (11 answers total)

If it's a positive balance, ask them to issue you a check to zero out the balance. You then deposit that into your bank and use that to pay the other.
posted by kschang at 3:06 PM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: P.S. Yes, it is a positive balance of nearly $600...It does make me rather groan to even think of any more dealings with them, but that would be worth a try.
posted by ragtimepiano at 3:09 PM on September 13, 2022

If you think you'll have the need for credit in the next few years, reconsider closing the account. (Rather, just don't use it. Or better, stick a Netflix on it with auto pay.) Particularly if you've been with BofA for a while.
posted by phunniemee at 3:35 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Don't know if it works the same way there, but in Canada I'm pretty sure I could transfer a credit balance to a linked bank account through online banking -- sort of like making a payment, but in reverse. Worth investigating?
posted by kate4914 at 4:25 PM on September 13, 2022

In my experience credit card companies are very willing to send you a check for a credit balance. (The reason I know they are generally willing because I occasionally have a credit balance on cards I rarely use and eventually the credit card company will send me a check without me even asking for it.) . There may be a way to do a transfer to another card company but it is probably simpler to just call and ask them to send you a check for credit balance to the address on file for the account, deposit the check to your regular checking account and then use the funds to pay off the Discover card. It will take maybe 2-4 weeks to get it all done (the longest step is waiting for the check to arrive in the mail) but it is the least amount of hassle.
posted by metahawk at 5:09 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Seconding that you should consider keeping the account open, and putting a small predictable monthly bill on it. The reason being that your credit score depends in part on the length of time you've had credit accounts open, longer being better.
posted by hovey at 5:11 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can you just do a balance transfer of $600 from the Discover card to the Mastercard, thereby bringing the balance on the Mastercard to zero?
posted by heatherlogan at 6:21 PM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Do NOT do the balance transfer, those *always* involve rather onerous fees, especially for something as small as $600.
If you don’t have a checking account linked to the credit card (and it doesn’t sound like you do), just call and request a check.
If you’ve had the card more than five years, keep it open as closing it will likely have some negative impact on your credit rating. How much impact depends on overall credit card debt, and your current credit rating. The less debt, and higher rating, the less impact it will have.
posted by dbmcd at 8:30 PM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was once sent a check for under $1 because I left a credit on a BofA card for more than 30 days. You may not have to do anything, but you should call and ask for a check. Don't mention anything else, just request a check and deal with closing the account later.
posted by soelo at 9:13 PM on September 13, 2022

The devil is in the details but you can just roll up to a bank and ask for a cash advance on credit cards. The downside is normally they start charging interest on cash advances immediately but since you have a positive balance that isn't an issue. There may be a fee associated with a cash advance though so you'll want to check on that first.
posted by Mitheral at 9:38 PM on September 13, 2022

If you decide to keep the card to shore up your credit score, but it has an annual fee, call them and ask if you can change it to a zero-annual-fee tier under the same account number. They did it for me at the beginning of the pandemic.
posted by dum spiro spero at 11:22 PM on September 13, 2022