They may be accustomed to using the P2P service provided by their traditional bank (e.g. Your friends and family may have traditional bank accounts and be hesitant to open a Chime account. Unfortunately, to use Pay Friends, both parties in the transaction must be Chime customers. Chime’s P2P product is called “Pay Friends”.
Peer-to-peer payment systems allow you to send and receive money with friends and family. The Downside to Chime is its Pay Friends P2P Service Chime is the financial technology (fintech) company that designs the app.
These three products are nicely bundled inside of their mobile app.Ĭhime customers receive FDIC protection because Chime’s banking services are actually provided by Bancorp Bank. Chime is the country’s fifth-largest bank, with a total of 8 million customers that use the company as their primary bank.Ĭhime keeps its product offerings simple they offer only one checking account (with a debit card), one savings account, and one secured credit card. Moving money from one account to the Chime Credit Builder account is easy to do from the app.Hundreds of thousands of customers register for a new Chime account each month. This makes keeping money in the account a no-brainer. You can use the Move My Pay feature to have whatever amount you choose from your paycheck directly deposited into your Chime Credit Builder account. Or you could use it as a functioning debit card since there are no fees or interest rates. Once you’ve built your credit score to the point where you no longer need a secured credit card, you can just close the account. There’s no option to transfer to an unsecured card. Chime Credit Builder can give you the opportunity to boost your credit rating to a higher score so that you can take advantage of those perks in the future. Those kinds of rewards are enjoyed by those with high credit scores. It has no rewards, perks or cash-back offers on purchases. Perks and RewardsĬhime Credit Builder is strictly for rebuilding your credit. This also ensures there are no late fees.
You can spend as much as you have on the card (in your spending account). However, with the Chime Credit Builder card, you don’t have to worry about that because Chime doesn’t report credit utilization rates. Credit reporting bureaus like to see a ratio of 30% or lower. If you have a credit limit of $1,000 and you owe the credit card company $400, for example, your credit utilization rate is 40%. Your credit utilization is the amount you owe divided by how much credit you have available. With traditional cards, credit utilization can affect your credit score. If you add $150 to your account, your new credit limit is $250. If you then charge $100 worth of goods and don’t add more money to your account, your credit limit for the next month is $100. Remember to check your credit report to verify whether your score is increasing.Īnytime you want to use your card, transfer money from your spending account to your Credit Builder card and you can make purchases anywhere Visa is accepted, which is almost everywhere.įor example, if you have $200, you can put that amount in your spending account. However, Chime then reports your on-time payments to the major credit bureaus every month to help you build your credit, so it works like a credit card as well.