They have a sentence in their terms and conditions where if you ACH money into your Upgrade Premier Savings account from an external account, you can only take the money out within 60 days to that same external account. No big deal I thought.
Well, a week ago I used my First Foundation savings account to ACH a decent amount into Upgrade. The transfer went through just fine. Now when I want to pull that money out via FF, I get a message from First Foundation saying, This account has been suspended from the Funds Transfer Service. I called FF and they said the routing number Upgrade uses isn’t compatible with personal accounts, or something to that effect, I wasn’t too sure what they meant. A called Upgrade and they said something like, because it was from a savings account to a savings it wouldn’t process, whatever that meant.
So I basically have to leave that money there for almost 2 months. While it might be a good dilemma to be in, earning 3.50%, but it seems a bit shady. I can probably ACH it from Upgrade to First Foundation, but Upgrade transfer limits are small. $10,000 every 7 days max. Anybody else run into this?
I have nothing against Fintechs or Neobanks as I’ve made thousands of dollars off them in promo bonuses over the years, but when it comes to funky requirements, they are more likely to have them. I appreciate your post. If you haven’t already posted about this in the comments of one of the Upgrade threads on Doctor of Credit, I’m sure the folks there with Upgrade accounts will find it useful as well. Your dilemma reminds us that it’s often a good idea to test these sort of things out with smaller amounts before moving over large balances.
Like the term neobank instead here. They might be FDIC insured if they fail (unlike the crypto debacles) but I think the regulators are still playing catch up for some stuff like the funky requirements (“innovation”)