I’ve finally gotten around to testing out Evolve Money. For those who do not know, Evolve Money is an online bill pay service that allows you to bill pay using debit cards. The unique feature of Evolve Money is you can bill pay using Visa gift cards. Evolve Money is intended to pay rent, mortgage, utilities, student loans, and car loans. You cannot pay credit card bills with Evolve Money. I’ve been testing it out by paying my mortgage. However, I’ve been having trouble paying Chase mortgage using Evolve Money.
I was curious how my Chase mortgage was going to take my $200 transaction with my $200 Visa gift card. I know that there was not much risk doing so and I don’t mind applying a few dollars to my principal payment. I had bought 5X $200 Visa gift cards with Swagbucks (might not work now) the other week, so paying off some principal and earning cash back and points doesn’t seem like a bad deal. The main point of paying my mortgage with Evolve Money is a quick liquidation of Visa gift cards that I’ve earned 5X points on.
My $200 payment took about 2 business days to show up in my Chase account. It first showed up as unapplied funds. The next day it was applied to pay down my principal. From a financial point of view, paying down my principal might not be the best option for me. That is because my interest rate is quite low on my mortgage, and I could probably use that money to invest in retirement instead. I can probably accept more risk in the stock market while I am young. Paying down the mortgage is less riskier, but I think I will come out ahead in the long-run in IRAs and 401Ks. I’m not a financial planner, but I am an accountant and any critique or advice is welcomed in this field.
Partial Payments Show as Unapplied Funds, then Towards Principal
I wanted to see if I could get these partial payments reversed and applied towards my monthly statement. I secure messaged Chase to see what they would say. They responded with the following:
Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate the
opportunity to provide you with additional information. My
name is Phillip, and I would be more than happy to assist
you.I was able to review the transaction history for your loan
ending in XXXX. Currently you are enrolled in our
Autocharge (ACH) program, where your monthly payment is
drafted automatically from your account of choice on the
1st of every month. Any payments submitted after the
account has been made current are applied to the
principal.To adhere to the terms of your mortgage, we can’t credit a
partial payment amount as a complete mortgage payment. The
partial payment won’t be applied as a monthly payment
until all the funds are received. It won’t assist you in
reducing the term of your loan or the amount of interest
you pay, since the funds are not applied until an entire
monthly payment has been received.We apologize for any inconvenience this temporary problem
has caused, and we are committed to delivering the best
service possible.
Since Chase can’t accept partial payments for mortgage payment, my next attempt with Evolve Money is going to send multiple payments adding up to my total mortgage payment. To do this, I will have to create an account under my wife’s name and possibly another account. Evolve Money only allows payments of $1,000 per day per account. Hopefully, my attempt to do this will work. Anybody else have any successful experiences with Evolve Money?
