AccountNow Gold Visa Prepaid Card Review
After some years of offering multiple plan options, AccountNow has now reduced their offerings to one–the AccountNow Gold Visa Prepaid Card. While offering a couple of bonus perks, the card comes with a big price tag and insufficient features to justify it.
AccountNow Gold Visa® Prepaid Card
Pros
- Bill pay allows you to send paper checks
- Referral/Direct Deposit Bonuses
Cons
- High Monthly Fee
- No Free ATM Withdrawals
Overview of the AccountNow Gold Prepaid Card
For a number of years, AccountNow offered its basic Account Now Visa, which had no monthly fee, but charged $1 for each purchase transaction. The AccountNow Gold Visa was its monthly fee version of its prepaid cards–no transaction fees, but a monthly fee of $9.95. While the AccountNow Gold prepaid card was the cheaper of the two, it still wasn’t (and isn’t) cheap.
In 2015, Green Dot purchased AccountNow and has since discontinued the basic AccountNow Visa. It now offers only the AccountNow Gold version.
The AccountNow Gold Visa Prepaid Card offers the basics, such as direct deposit. And it offers a couple of bonuses–like a $20 refer-a-friend bonus and a $15 direct deposit bonus. But they don’t offset the hefty monthly fee.
Features
Like other prepaid cards, the AccountNow Gold card can be used for direct deposit without a fee. It also offers the following:
Bill Pay – The cards bill pay service can be used to pay many vendors electronically but also can be used for check payments, like rent.
Bonuses – You can earn a $20 refer-a-friend bonus by signing up for the program. On enrollment, you receive a code that your referred friends need to use when getting their card. Your friend receives $10 as well. You also can earn a direct deposit bonus of $15 if you set up direct deposit within your first 6 months after activating the card. No enrollment is required. You just need to receive $500 or more to the card from a direct deposit transaction for at least 2 consecutive months.
AccountNow Gold Card Fees
At a fee of $9.95 per month, the AccountNow Gold Visa Prepaid Card is on the expensive side. For monthly fee cards, the typical monthly fee is closer to $5.00. Plus, there’s no way to waive or reduce the monthly fee, like you can with some cards, when using direct deposit or loading a minimum amount on the card.
ATM transactions come with a charge too. The fee is $2.50 per withdrawal. ATM balance inquiries cost $1.50. Although the balance inquiry fees can be avoided by using the card’s online portal to check your balance, the AccountNow Gold card lacks the convenience of a mobile app.
There are no transaction or activation fees with the card.
Card Limits
The maximum balance on the AccountNow Gold card is set at $10,000–pretty typical for prepaid cards. Other key limits, like the daily spending limit and ATM limit are about average at $3,000 and $500. But those limits are reduced to $2,000 for daily spending and $300 at the ATM if you don’t set up direct deposit for the card.
The cash load limit is $2,500 per day.
Loading Money
There are a number of ways to load money on AccountNow Gold card.
Direct Deposit: Like most prepaid cards, you can set up paychecks or government benefits to be loaded onto the card via direct deposit. There’s no fee for this service.
Mobile Check Deposit: Although the card doesn’t have its own mobile app, you can still load checks to the card through the Ingo Money App.
Cash: You have some choices here. You can load cash to the AccountNow Gold card using a number of reload networks:
- Western Union,
- Visa ReadyLink,
- MoneyGram,
- Green Dot MoneyPak, and
- Reload @ the Register
AccountNow doesn’t charge a fee, but the reload network agents will. It ranges from $3.74 – 5.95 per cash load.
How to Get the AccountNow Gold Card
You can get the AccountNow Gold card online with no credit or ChexSystems check. The card requires only a simple application. Just an address and social security number to verify identity.
The Bottom Line
The AccountNow Gold Visa Prepaid Card has simply lagged behind other prepaid cards. Both in price-competitiveness and features. It’s high-end monthly fee coupled with a lack of fee-free ATM network isn’t justified by any features that you couldn’t find with other less expensive cards.
There are better prepaid card choices available.