Consumer complaint received 2024-01-02
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — Problem during payment process
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (NY)

Summary : Chase credit cards have no clear policy saying savings accounts are ineligible to pay their balances. And their software even validates external savings accounts and connects them so that they can be saved for auto-payment. Yet Chase then denies payments from savings accounts, resulting in late fees and interest. They need a clear and accessible policy, online software that does not validate accounts from which they can not accept payment, and they need to return late fees and interest to anyone else who this happens to. 

I changed the auto-pay for my Chase credit card to come out of my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX savings account. Chase 's website connected the accounts, identified the account as a savings account, and flagged no issues. However, my XX/XX/2023 payment of {$1400.00} was returned, and I was charged a late fee and interest. The account has over {$20000.00} in it, so the payment return could not have been for lack of funds. 

I only saw the payment had been returned when I checked my account again on XX/XX/XXXX. I immediately called Chase. The representative with whom I spoke said I should check with my bank. She was kind enough to forgive my late fee and interest, which is the main bright spot here. 

Today, XX/XX/XXXX, when I called XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX, their representative said there was no reason why XXXX would have denied the payment to Chase and no reason on their end why my account would not be able to make the payment. 

I called Chase again after that and spoke with a second representative. She let me know a letter had been mailed to me explaining why the payment was returned. Since I did not yet know the letter was also sent to me in digital form within my bank account, I tried to figure things out with her on the phone, as I did not want to run into this issue again. First, she claimed that the account number Chase had for my XXXX checkings account was wrong. Which made no sense -- it was not the account in question, I had made previous successful payments from that account, and most puzzling, Chase 's own software had identified and verified that checking number when connecting my XXXX bank account to my Chase credit card account. Given that for some reason the representative kept referring to that checking account number even though I repeatedly specified that the savings account was the one that had run into the issue, I eventually asked if Chase accepts payments from savings accounts. She said no. 

While that was a surprisingly simple answer, it made little sense, given that Chase, which has one of the most sophisticated banking websites in the world, would have validated my savings account as a form of payment if it in fact could not use it as such. 

I went back to see if there is anywhere I can find a policy from them, or warning, about not accepting savings. When connecting accounts via the Chase website, there is a notice that says that some savings accounts are not eligible for payments, but they say to check with your financial institution to determine that. Having checked with my financial institution, XXXX, there seems no external reason why my savings account is ineligible. So it must be internal to Chase. 

Which makes it doubly odd that, when I found a digital version of the letter they sent me, it said that my financial institution had not honored the payment. 

I found that other people have had related experiences as well. Example : XXXX XXXX XXXX Whether intentional or not, Chase could really harm consumers, especially those who do not have such good payment records with their Chase credit card and can not so easily get a representative to forgive their interest and late fees. I am aware that most people do not use savings accounts for credit card payments, but certainly some do, and Chase should have clear policies on this and software that enacts them.