After Vanilla Reloads became unavailable at CVS, I found myself using my AMEX Bluebird a lot less often because I would mostly use Bluebird to load Vanilla Reload cards and use the bill pay feature to pay off credit card bills. AMEX Serve is very similar to Bluebird, but you can load Serve with a credit card, up to $1,000 a month. Here is some info that will help converting AMEX Bluebird to Serve.
1. Make sure your Bluebird account is completely empty. I had $0.01 in my account and I wasn’t able to close it. I emptied it out, and then I could close the account.
2. Call Bluebird at 1-877-486-5990. You will get someone overseas, pay patient and let them know you want to cancel the account.
3. Once closed, sign up for Serve and use the exact same contact info. If you change your contact info, it might mess up and you might have to wait 30 days.
4. Wait 7-10 for your AMEX Serve card to come into the mail.
5. Activate your Serve card. The big perk of AMEX Serve is that you can load your account with a credit card (up to $1,000). You can only load $200 a day, and after the first load you have to call AMEX to verify your credit card. Note that you do not earn points for AMEX credit cards, Barclaycard Arrival should work. To avoid the monthly $1 fee, load more than $500 per month.
Converting AMEX Bluebird to Serve is a good idea because you can still load prepaid cards at Walmart to AMEX Serve. I don’t like going to Walmart, so AMEX Serve is a better option for me. Loading $1K onto my Barclaycard Arrival Plus credit card earns me an extra $22.22 per month for almost no work. It beats going to Walmart for sure. After loading to Serve, I am able to pay off credit card bills using the Serve funds through the Bill Pay option.
If you don’t like going to Walmart or lazy like me, converting AMEX Bluebird to Serve might be a good idea.
