Changes to Mango Prepaid 6% Interest Account (take 2)

Transition Process

We’ve written about the numerous options of high-interest savings accounts, including the 6% interest rate earned with the Mango prepaid/savings account. Mango recently announced that their account will switch from being backed by First Bank & Trust to Sunrise Bank. While that sounds very boring, there are numerous things to be aware of here.

• The prepaid card is being reissued in the form of a Visa in place of Mastercard.
• You need to go into your Mango account to process the switch to the new account.
• If you don’t process the switch, be sure to stop any direct deposits to the account as after 8/31/15 they’ll go on to be rejected. Any remaining funds will be sent to you via check sometime in October if you don’t empty the account before then.
• As before, the Mango account comes with a monthly fee of $3, charged on the last day of the month.
• I assume that we won’t get the $3 fee on both accounts after transitioning. Since it has a zero balance after the transfer, it would be hard for them to collect the fee, in any case.
• Unclear if the $20 direct deposit promo (for new card members) is still around. It’s not mentioned anymore on the site.

New Account Details

Most importantly, the Mango prepaid is now open again for new applicants – it had been closed temporarily – and the 6% savings account is still being offered. (The Union Plus prepaid card is still apparently unavailable for signup.)

Two important caveats:

• The new offer has a requirement of a monthly direct deposit of $500 in order to be eligible for the 6% savings account. While we expect that any ACH transfer will qualify as a direct deposit (it has in the past), this does make the card more intrusive as you’ll have to set up monthly deposits. Easiest would be to automate this and have $500 pushed and pulled from/to your regular checking account.
• There’s also a requirement that there remain a $1 balance in the account at the end of the month in order to qualify for the 6% interest rate. Since there is a $3 monthly fee, you want to make sure that $4 remains at the end of the month, which will leave over the $1 amount. To automate this, push $500 and pull $497 each month, after ensuring there will be a $1 balance left.

Because of the new $500 direct deposit requirement, some may prefer the Netspend accounts which offer a 5% interest rate (just about the same as Mango’s 6% with a $3 monthly fee) and don’t have the monthly maintenance.

UPDATE: FreequentFlyer notes that the new Mango accounts are incapable of getting ACH pulls from them. This is hugely important; aside from the fact that it’s nice to have easy access to you money (i.e. you don’t need to pull out the money be purchasing a money order), we need a way to pull out the $500 monthly that goes into the account. This is not possible and this really kills the value of the Mango card, in my view. You can still deal with pulling out the $500 monthly via money order or ATM, but it adds a lot of hassle to the account.

Update #2: ACH withdrawals seem to be back on now.

My Impressions

I just got the new card and completed the transfer, here’s what I saw:

• The new site looks much more outdated than the old one.
• When you activate the new card, at that time the funds are officially transferred from the old account under First Bank & Trust to the new one under Sunrise Bank.
• Both the prepaid balance and the savings balance gets automatically transferred at the time of activating the new card.
• It shows up in the account as ‘Mangotransition’.
• There’s some sort of rewards program on the new site which I don’t believe was there on the old one. I haven’t gotten any offers yet; it could be it’s like the Netspend rewards program which only targets you with offers based on your spend.

Account/Routing Number

The other important thing to note is with regards to the account and routing numbers on the account. (You’ll need these to process the required direct deposit.)

The account number remains the same apparently. Oddly, the routing number is also showing up in the online account as the same (114994196). It’s hard to understand how that’s possible being that it’s routing to a different bank now. Possibly, Mango has their own routing number and they are able to transfer it over.

Note: In the mailing they send out, it states a new routing number (091017138), contradicting what it shows online. According to a Mango rep who I spoke to, the new routing number (091017138) is only for new card members. Those who had the old Mango Mastercard and transitioned over should continue to use the old routing number. This means that if you have Mango attached to your checking account, you don’t have to change your ACH/direct deposit setup and you can just change the amount to $500 to make you eligible for the 6% interest.

The rep told me that the new routing number won’t work for old card members and this is being reported by someone who attempted such a thing as well.

• Old routing number: 114994196
• New routing number: 091017138