Rewards Checking And New Chip Cards

stubrett | Aug 2, 2016 | 1 posts since 2016

As more and more businesses upgrade to the chip reader for credit cards, it seems like it is becoming harder and harder to find places to meet the credit card purchase requirements for the reward checking accounts.

It is my understanding that these purchases must be signature based transactions and not PIN based transactions to qualify. With the new chip readers if you use your debit card you must enter your PIN, which means that this transaction did not count.

How are people finding ways around this?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

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Answers

pearlbrown | Aug 4, 2016 | 2,298 posts since 2010

Stubrett, a couple of comments:

(1) Some RCAs (reward checking accounts) require only signature-based transactions. Others, however, will accept PIN-based transactions. It varies by institution. At some institutions, the only requirement is that the transaction post within a certain window, without regard to whether it is signature based or PIN-based. Others are more strict and count only the signature-based transactions. If you are considering opening an RCA, ask the institution to clarify the requirement: Do they accept signature-based only or do PIN-based transactions meet the requirements too?

(2) Some retailers (such as WalMart) have started processing transactions under $50 as PIN-less debits, even if the customer elected credit (see here). In this thread, you will find: (1) a comment that using self-checkout at WalMart may result in the transaction being processed as credit and (2) a workaround that DA member ekeppel found which forces a WalMart transaction to process as a credit, although unfortunately that workaround may not work at all retailers.

Hope that helps. Good luck to you.

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