We previously reported that as of October 8 (today), Chime will begin charging a 3% fee on *some* debit card loads. From my own Chime account it was pretty clear that PPBDC would be charged the 3%. I have a regular debit card set up in my Chime account (I used Chime to meet a bank bonus threshold), and I have two PPBDCs set up in my Chime account. On the PPBDCs, Chime wrote about how “as of Oct 8 there may be up to a 3% transfer fee”, but on my regular bank debit card  it doesn’t say that.
Another change we mentioned is that as of today Oct 8, there’s supposed to be a minimum transfer amount of $25.
I was wondering whether these actually came into effect, but I didn’t want to incur the 3% charge, so I figured I’d wait for a blogger to try it out. Then, I realized, ‘hey, I’m a blogger too, so why don’t I try it out?’ (I’m still not used to that fact), but the 3% was still hurting. Then I realized that I’m so used to loading $100 per day, but I can try loading $1 or $25 and see what happens; it’s just 3%, so it will be 3 cents or 75 cents for a $1/$25 load respectively.
Anyway, I tried a $1 load with my PPBDC and it went through! So the $25 minimum has not yet taken effect. Then I checked my PP account, and I just see a $1 charge. It’s possible that they’ll come back and charge the 3% separately, but I doubt it.
Then I tried a $1 charge on my other PPBDC, and again it went through as a $1 charge. So I got brave and did another $98 and the charge is just $98.
So for today we can still load the $100 fee-free, with a small risk of Chime coming back and charging the 3% later. Hopefully, they’ll forget about they’re planned changes, but more likely it will go into effect tomorrow or sometime within a few days. In any event, you can try out a $1 charge, and if it goes through then that probably means that they haven’t updated the system yet, since there’s supposed to be a $25 minimum, and then you can go ahead with another $99 charge.
