Balance transfer more than I owe - what issues?

[sznthescore]

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@frugal47374 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

You can always just deposit it directly to your account. Call your bank and get their deposit mailing address and put your checking account number as the account number for the BT and put in the deposit mailing address. Money shows up in a week or so. 

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Thanks for pointing that out.  I've never heard of that but I found some old discussions of this on the Internet.

First time for me makes it a little scary ... but I may try that.

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Checking Account number better start with:

3= American Express

4= Visa

5= Mastercard

6= Discover

All other numbers would be suspicious ... IMO

[frugal47374]

Account number actually does start with "4".  First 6 digits match to a credit union I don't have an account at.  If NFCU were going to look for "suspicious", they could note the bank name I gave them didn't match the "credit" card number.

But why would they care?  They are willing to let me borrow my credit limit at 0% interest for 15 months...presumably because they hope I won't pay it off then and they start collecting interest.  Do they really care what I did with the money?  I guess that general question goes for any balance transfer.  Do credit card companies care if it really is paying off another card?

So I decided to do the test.  $100 may be on the way to my bank account.

[sznthescore]

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@frugal47374 wrote:

Account number actually does start with "4".  First 6 digits match to a credit union I don't have an account at.  If NFCU were going to look for "suspicious", they could note the bank name I gave them didn't match the "credit" card number.

But why would they care?  They are willing to let me borrow my credit limit at 0% interest for 15 months...presumably because they hope I won't pay it off then and they start collecting interest.  Do they really care what I did with the money?  I guess that general question goes for any balance transfer.  Do credit card companies care if it really is paying off another card?

So I decided to do the test.  $100 may be on the way to my bank account.

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@frugal47374 Cool beans. Let us all know how it works out. On the plus side you'll have 15 month 0% Interest on $100.

[firefox100]

Yes they do care because there is higher risk when you do cash loan or cash advance to your checking account. For example if you do 10K balance transfer from credit card to another for the 10K amount your not increasing your debt, your  liability say stays the same. If you deposit the money into your checking account then you will owe another 10K not paying off other credit line. Some banks make extra fees with higher cash advance fees around 5% on the amount you transfer to your checking account. They can tell by account number credit cards have 16 or 15 digits and start with 3 or 4 and 5 and 6.

[Anonymous]

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@sznthescore wrote:

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@frugal47374 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

You can always just deposit it directly to your account. Call your bank and get their deposit mailing address and put your checking account number as the account number for the BT and put in the deposit mailing address. Money shows up in a week or so. 

---

Thanks for pointing that out.  I've never heard of that but I found some old discussions of this on the Internet.

First time for me makes it a little scary ... but I may try that.

---

Checking Account number better start with:

3= American Express

4= Visa

5= Mastercard

6= Discover

All other numbers would be suspicious ... IMO

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Its not suspicious. You can use a BT offer to pay other types of loans besides credit cards, literally says so at the top of the screen in the app. People have done this and had no problem with it.

[Anonymous]

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@firefox100 wrote:

Yes they do care because there is higher risk when you do cash loan or cash advance to your checking account. For example if you do 10K balance transfer from credit card to another for the 10K amount your not increasing your debt, your  liability say stays the same. If you deposit the money into your checking account then you will owe another 10K not paying off other credit line. Some banks make extra fees with higher cash advance fees around 5% on the amount you transfer to your checking account. They can tell by account number credit cards have 16 or 15 digits and start with 3 or 4 and 5 and 6.

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To NFCU this will just look like you're paying off a loan other than a credit card. If someone really wants to investigate it, I guess they could call the bank and give them to account number to find out, but others have done this with no issue with NFCU and even Chase.

[KatSoDak]

I accidentally balance transferred to one of my CCs instead of DH's.  We each have this particular card and both of them live in the sock drawer in the cool card holder I bought. 

Apparently when I pulled the card to enter the  numbers in the BT form I grabbed mine instead of his. 

A few days later I saw that my zero utilization card had a large negative balance.  Ops!  

I called the receiving bank, explained my mistake and asked what options I had.  Basically I could charge that amount, have a check mailed to me or have it transferred to my checking account at the same bank. 

It was transferred the next day and by the following day it was on DH's card.

[frugal47374]

To close the loop on this:

I have a $0 charge, 0% interest balance transfer offer. I wanted to “borrow” all the 0% money available. After paying off any credit card balances I had, my thought was to overpay some credit cards. Then my purchases would be prepaid (with 0% money) or, if they sent me a check for my credit balance, I'd still have the 0% money.

However, Anonymous pointed out there was a much simpler way. If I put in my regular account number at a bank, the money will go there just like any other deposit. I did some tests and that did work. It takes longer (around 10 days) for the money to show up since they are mailing a paper check, but this is a much simpler way to borrow at 0% for this type of balance transfer offer.