At 4:15PM Pacific on Thursday October 29, we flipped the switch on FamZoo.com to start shipping cards with EMV chips that also fully support Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. Hooray! 🙂
Currently, the chip cards are only going out to new families who have registered after that cutover time. I know that’s disappointing to those of you who are existing FamZoo families with the original magnetic stripe cards.
Not to worry though. We’ll have you covered very soon!
All of our existing families on magnetic stripe cards will be upgraded at no charge over the next month or two. It turns out the auto-upgrade is a big effort, and we’re still testing a critical piece of technology from our card processor to clone your existing cards.
When the upgrade technology is ready, parents will see a new sequence of screens in the FamZoo app(lication) where they can:
- Review existing cards in the family.
- Remove any cards that are no longer in use.
- Update any card addresses that need it.
- Click Go when ready to kick off the cloning and shipment of the new chip cards.
When your new chip cards arrive 7 to 10 business days later and you activate them, we’ll automatically transition the balances and settings from the old cards to the new ones. You will not have to manually update any of your settings like allowances, chore charts, interest, etc.
I know some existing families are wondering: “What if I order some additional cards now? Will I get the new cards?”
No. Unfortunately, we can’t mix’n match the new and old cards within an existing family. That’s because the new cards also have a new, larger issuing bank — CenterState Bank instead of Four Corners Community Bank. We can’t let customers do card-to-card transfers back and forth between the two banks. So, existing families will have to wait for the upgrade step. Apologies for the forced exercise in delayed gratification... 😬
Aside from the wait, there are four other pieces of “bad” news. So, let’s get them out of the way now:
- The new cards will have new routing and account numbers, so you’ll have to re-do your electronic reload setup. As always, we’re happy to help you with that.
- The one-time extra card fee is increasing from $2 to $3. Chip cards are more expensive to manufacture.
- You’ll no longer get infinite replacements for free — just the first 2 in the family. After that, replacements are $3 each.
- The new cards do not belong to a free ATM network. So, it will be harder to avoid ATM fees imposed by the operators of the ATMs. You might try the in-store cash-back route instead.
OK, back to the good news: EMV chip cards. Apple Pay. Samsung Pay. Google Pay. Coming your way! (And available now for new registering families.)
NEWER
10 comments:
Hi! I received the new chipped cards. When setting up auto reload through my bank using the new routing info, it showed up as South State Bank, not CenterState Bank which is shown here and on back of card. Is this correct?
Yes, it is correct. South State Bank recently acquired CenterState bank and, depending on the context, you may see either name.
Why is it that the routing number associated with my "card information" within FamZoo doesn't match the routing number for either CenterState Bank or South State Bank?
If you Google "NNNNNNNNN routing number" where NNNNNNNNN is the routing number on the Card Info page, you'll see it maps to South State Bank (which was acquired Centerstate Bank). The routing number we use is distinct from the default routing number for their retail account holders. It's unique to our card program.
I can't get my daughters card to load to Apple Pay. what am I doing wrong...which name is used for the account (the funding person name or the FamZoo name, as both are on the card)
Contact us so we can look up your account and diagnose the problem. The cardholder name is used (first embossed line) Almost all of the failure cases we have seen are due to an address mismatch issue.
Somewhere in Apple settings the wrong address is being entered or has been stored.
Please see the "Update your billing and contact information" section here for possible solutions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205583
And, if that does not work, here's an even more comprehensive recipe pulled from:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7270409
1. Open Contacts. At the top, tap the contact that says "My Card". Correct the address info there if needed. Also, click in the search field at the top and enter the address that is wrong. If you find any with "my name" or "me", correct the address in those entries.
2. Open Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay
2a. Shipping Address; Edit to remove any outdated addresses, add any new one(s) you may wish, and select your default.
2b. Select each card and scroll down to Billing Address. Modify as appropriate as you did for shipping addresses.
Note: Apple Wallet seems to pull default addresses from the contact card designated as "My Card" first, and those addresses can only be edited in Contacts. After editing contacts, the old addresses still remain in Wallet, but then can be removed from the Wallet settings. So you must make the changes in the order indicated above.
And, finally, another tip passed along from a customer:
1. Go to https://appleid.apple.com
2. Sign in with your iTunes Store account and password (your iTunes Store account is an Apple ID).
3. Scroll down to "Payment & Shipping" and click "Edit Payment Information".
4. Edit your payment method and billing address to make any needed corrections.
when using gpay do you send funds to the parent card, or will it allow the transfer to occur to the kids card?
For Google Pay, a FamZoo card can be added as a payment method, but (unlike with Apple Pay) it cannot be added as a bank account for the purpose of reloading the card.
Does Zelle work with this new bank/provider?
Hi Scott,
Our card accounts can't be used with Zelle. They have a bug that does not recognize our unusual but legitimate 16 digit account numbers.
We have to be linked as an external account as described here:
https://blog.famzoo.com/p/load.html#bank-account
Or, if you are an iPhone user, we can set up reload via Apple Pay (immediate setup, 1 business day transfers, free):
https://blog.famzoo.com/p/load.html#applepay
Or, you can move the funds using the PopMoney service:
https://blog.famzoo.com/2016/01/popmoney-load-prepaid-card-from-checking-account.html
Or, you can use any of the other options listed on our Reload help page.
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