topic Re: Balance transfer questions !! in Credit Cards

Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 21:16:36 GMT

Hey all.

So when you do a balance transfer TO a card, obviously that new lender can see you've transferred debt from another card to theirs. I.e. You get a new Amex, transfer $5000 FROM your BofA -- obviously Amex sees that.

However, when you pay TO another card using a balance transfer does that lender see it as a payment from another credit card company or just from you? I transferred a balance to my partners high limit Venture One (0% apr for year!) from my Amex ($1800) and on my Amex acct it only says "Electronic payment received -$1800 Thank you!" .. Reason I ask is I want to transfer the balance from my other Amex of $1,000 to this venture card but don't want to spook Amex by paying them off with other cards or lenders. So do they "see this" and can it provoke AA??

I've heard of people getting AA for over using BT offers (though I'll never get this - why offer consumers something only to penalize them for using it ? Makes no sense) but not so much from the accounts you pay TO using other accounts. My interest on my Amex cards are 17% and 14% respectively. The Venture One on which I am AU is 0% until next October and has a high limit.

Any thoughts oh wise ones ? Definitely don't want to spook Amex as they've been great to me !!!

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:03:43 GMT

I'd like to know this answer as well

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:22:34 GMT

I want to make a large purchase that I can jump from card to card while paying off, but not if it will hurt me

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:34:21 GMT

Somebody here has to know the answer to this. Anybody !?

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

NRB525 — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:48:49 GMT

It has been more than an hour since the opening post...

AMEX only cares that you pay them. If you don't pay them, they get kind of snippy for some reason. But as long as they keep getting money to pay your balance, they are happy.

BT of this size are not going to be looked at by anyone, they are small. If you were trying to regularly BT $50k around, say 4 or 10 times, and your typical balance was $1k, you would get a phone call most likely. For these transfers, no one cares enough to call

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:51:39 GMT

I just want to avoid a financial review or any kind of AA from Amex for "moving around debt" or using BT offers. They seem to randomly pinpoint people for weird things. But then again many lenders do!!

I guess your take on this then is that as long as Amex gets their money, they don't care where it comes from? It seems that BT payments post like a regular payment and show no notation of being a BT

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

B335is — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 22:59:29 GMT

Agree with NRB. Firstly they want to be paid. If you start racking up substantial balances on other cards they (and others) may become concerned.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

NRB525 — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 23:02:45 GMT

The AMEX FR is more likely to turn up when you are bringing debt onto the AMEX card. Paying down, or BT off to another card, seems that's on the "good side" of their equation.

And yes, I've done a few BT off of my Delta Gold card recently to wind down the low APR period, and they just show up as "electronic payment", which is what the BT Destination bank is doing. As far as I know, there is no transaction designator in the ACH payments system that does much to identify the type of payment involved, probably not able to identify a BT different from a regular payment.

That's probably an important point to make. ACH = Automated Clearing House. The transactions are not directly from one bank to another, they have to go through the central payment clearing hub, so that creates certain requirements to make transactions generic.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 23:13:31 GMT

Ah yes you're correct !!! Thank you for the insight. Love this board !!!!

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:20:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I just want to avoid a financial review or any kind of AA from Amex for "moving around debt" or using BT offers. They seem to randomly pinpoint people for weird things. But then again many lenders do!!

I guess your take on this then is that as long as Amex gets their money, they don't care where it comes from? It seems that BT payments post like a regular payment and show no notation of being a BT

I would think on the Amex financial side of things that they can tell which payments come from your checking accounts vs. which payments come from another lender. In both of my Amex accounts, there is a coding difference on how things are paid. If it is from a BT from another lender, it says "check." If I pay it directly from my checking account, it says "online." There are also other designations for types of payment. Given their sophisticated systems, I'm sure they must be able to see the origination of the "check., and that this type of payment comes in coded differently as check vs. how normal payments from me read. If I can see it, I'm sure they can see it. Whether it matters to them at all, I have no idea.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

NRB525 — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:44:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I just want to avoid a financial review or any kind of AA from Amex for "moving around debt" or using BT offers. They seem to randomly pinpoint people for weird things. But then again many lenders do!!

I guess your take on this then is that as long as Amex gets their money, they don't care where it comes from? It seems that BT payments post like a regular payment and show no notation of being a BT

I would think on the Amex financial side of things that they can tell which payments come from your checking accounts vs. which payments come from another lender. In both of my Amex accounts, there is a coding difference on how things are paid. If it is from a BT from another lender, it says "check." If I pay it directly from my checking account, it says "online." There are also other designations for types of payment. Given their sophisticated systems, I'm sure they must be able to see the origination of the "check., and that this type of payment comes in coded differently as check vs. how normal payments from me read. If I can see it, I'm sure they can see it. Whether it matters to them at all, I have no idea.

Ok, so here's a little quiz: Of these three payments on my Sept 13 AMEX statement, can you tell me which of them were payments by me, autopayments, or BT from another CC?

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:50:57 GMT

I can't, but I sure hope Amex can!

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:51:18 GMT

First one is your checking account. Second is auto pay.

Third is a BT?

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

NRB525 — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:58:40 GMT

The first one is a BT from SDFCU on my $500 secured card.

Second, obviously is initiated by AMEX, autopayment.

The third is a BT from Capital One.

If one mails in a check, that is a different payment route, so yes, that could be distinguished. Most push type electronic payments such as these, however, don't have much extra info. The source bank is just sending funds identified to go to a particular account at AMEX, with a specific accountholder name. Why the source bank is sending the funds is not relevant: That bank customer requested it and it's gone through the authorization procedures at the sending bank.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 04:46:06 GMT

@NRB525 wrote:

If one mails in a check, that is a different payment route, so yes, that could be distinguished.

I think that is why the notation on one of my payments reads "check", because it was a balance transfer payment from another bank.

The balance transfer payment in my account definitely looks different from all of the other payments.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 04:43:30 GMT

Good thread. Thanks for all helpful info. I'm transfer $2k form Wells Fargo to New Discover IT card and was wondering how this worked myself.

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 18:22:58 GMT

I'm interested in buying a motorcycle on a CC with a no interest for 18 months deal and paying it off over the 18 months and then taking what's left after 18 months and popping it on another card with a similar deal until paid off

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 18:24:02 GMT

By my calculations I should only have to do the transfer once, but I dunno if 4 or 5k would be too much of a transfer

Re: Balance transfer questions !!

UncleB — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 20:13:50 GMT

As a data point, whenever I've done a balance transfer, it looks the same as it does whenever I make a payment using my own bank's bill pay service. Sometimes it just shows, "Payment", other times "Electronic Payment", but in all cases it's the same as me paying the bill like I always do.

My lenders (including Amex) are simply happy to get paid by any method that's valid... I can't imagine them preferring one method over another.

The only thing I'm really concerned about is the timing... if there's a doubt as to when the BT will be processed, I'm always sure to make the minimum payment myself (to make sure the payment isn't counted as 'late'.) If I think the BT will be timed correctly, I still watch the account closely until it posts to make sure there's no problems.