Quick hit: two more free options for manufacturing debit transactions
/I wrote recently about some tools I use to manufacture debit card transactions in order to trigger the highest rates on rewards checking accounts (often but not exclusively marketed under the “Kasasa” brand).
Doctor of Credit then joined in the fun, noting that one of the easiest options, adding credit to your Amazon balance, has become onerous to the point of uselessness as they raised the minimum balance reload amount to $5 from the previous $1 minimum. Unless you’re a big Amazon spender, you’ll quickly end up with more money in Amazon credit than in interest.
With that in mind, I ran a few more experiments and found two more possibilities that are working for me for now. Note that individual banks and credit unions may code transactions differently so you’ll need to verify for yourself whether these meet the transaction requirements for your accounts.
Robinhood
Robinhood, the free stock- and crypto-trading app I write about occasionally, allows you to fund your cash balance using a debit card with no fee and a minimum deposit of $1. The money is immediately available in your account to withdraw or invest, as far as I can tell, and Robinhood does support fractional share ownership so you could even use this technique to drip some of your interest into the stock market, one of many ways to exercise compounding discipline.
PayPal
PayPal also allows you to add money to your balance with debit cards, again with a minimum of $1. PayPal in principle supports multiple cards per account, so you could use a single PayPal account to meet the debit requirements on more than one high-interest accounts. However, since PayPal also doesn’t have much in the way of identity verification, if you’re considering this I would personally suggest using a new PayPal account for each debit card you plan to use, so that if one account is frozen or closed it won’t necessarily impact the others you’re using.
Conclusion
Two final quick points. First, on the account I’m currently experimenting with, both Robinhood and PayPal transactions post as “signature” transactions so should count towards my qualification requirements, but that’s something that you’ll need to monitor for each of your accounts and each of your methods. No one else can do it for you and datapoints age fast in this game.
Finally, as hinted at above, with any service you’re experimenting with to manufacture transactions you need to keep in mind two parameters: how many accounts can you have, and how many cards can you link to each account? Venmo works great for my round-up savings account because it allows transactions under $1, but I can’t link additional debit cards. The Cash app and Robinhood (with their $1 minima) only allow one debit card to be linked at a time. PayPal is more flexible on the number of cards you can have linked, but many of us have horror stories about past account closures (even though mine ultimately ended with a fat settlement check).
