Triggering high-interest savings accounts

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Last month I wrote about two high-interest savings accounts linked to the Mango and Union Plus prepaid debit card products. At that time, Mango was no longer available for new signups, and I speculated that Union Plus would soon be closed to new cardholders as well.

Doctor of Credit reported yesterday that, sure enough, that day has come, and it's no longer possible to open new Union Plus prepaid accounts.

If you were lucky enough to open accounts in time, however, you still have access to those accounts, including their linked high-interest savings accounts, and you may be wondering how to trigger those high rates.

Rêv gives detailed information on deposits

When you make a deposit to a Mango or Union Plus account, it appears in your transaction history with a fair amount of detail. Here are four different transaction types I tried in order to trigger my second Mango card's high-interest savings account (I did two of each):

An Amazon Payments transfer:

A transfer from the Stripe account where my monthly blog subscriptions are deposited:

A TopCashBack redemption:

And a Chase Ultimate Rewards cash redemption:

And sure enough, in June I earned 6.02% APY on my savings account.

The problem is, Mango doesn't tell you which transactions triggered the higher interest rate!

Narrowing it down to 2

That's where the process of elimination comes in, since I opened both a second Mango account and a Union Plus prepaid account. But I haven't made a TopCashBack or Amazon Payments deposit to my Union Plus account: I've only made Stripe transfers and Chase Ultimate Rewards cash redemptions.

But in June, I earned $0.27 on an average daily balance of $66.66 in the savings account linked to my Union Plus prepaid card. Since these savings accounts compound daily, that puts me right in the ballpark of the promised 5.10% APY. In other words, one or both of Chase Ultimate Rewards redemptions or Stripe transfers qualified as direct deposits for the purposes of triggering the high-interest savings account.

If I had an additional account, I would see if Chase Ultimate Rewards cash redemptions alone are enough to trigger the higher interest rate, as I suspect they are.

I'll be maxing out these accounts as quickly as possible

Now that new applications are closed for both products, it's unclear how long existing cardholders will be allowed to keep their accounts. With that in mind, I'll be maxing out these accounts as quickly as possible in order to earn the full interest rate for as long as possible before existing accounts are closed.