Now that the Citicard applications are close to, if not, over we need other methods of earning big sums of miles. Funding new checking and savings accounts with your mileage earning credit cards has worked in the past. Most banks won’t treat the transaction as a purchase. Some will.

For the latest discussion you can read the mega thread on Flyertalk in the Milebuzz forum. link

When you have found a bank that will take your credit card for initial funding the question becomes how much can I fund with the card if my limit is $x.00. And secondly will it be treated as a cash advance or purchase? As I’m collecting AA miles I want to use my Citi AA Mastercard and Visa, both of which are no preset limit cards.

My Visa has a $15,000 limit. I tried to consolidate. I tried to move some of my MC credit limit to my Visa to increase the no preset limit size to no avail. The card is too new and with limited use. But I did get an agent that switched me to the department that handles no preset limit questions and had an interesting conversation.

With a no preset limit card you can actually spend more than the credit limit (it is not really a limit) as long as you pay it down to the soft limit established on the card plus the minimum monthly payment required when your next bill comes due. For example, if I try to fund my new checking account with my Citi Visa card that has a soft limit stated as $15,000 and I try to get a $25,000 charge approved,s if I’m OK with Citi then all I have to pay back when the statement comes due is the $10,000 over my soft limit and the minimum payment required that month.

I knew all that before hand but did not know each preset limit card is evaluated at the time you go over your limit. You may be granted the excess if your payment history is good, you have been consistent in using the card and have made substantial size payments in the past. They also check your credit with a soft pull to determine where you are at that moment. It all makes sense.

I asked on my relatively new Citi Visa card and was told that I would not get any additional funding in the form of going over my preset limit as I have a new card and I only used it the one time to meet my minimum spend.

So for me, if I decide to fund a new checking or savings account with my card, I’ll fund the initial deposit to about $14,000 on my $15,000 limit.

If you are thinking of funding a new account using a Citi credit card, try calling 888-873-2349 to check how far you can go with your no preset limit card and ask about setting your cash advance limit at $0.00. I did that to mine.

PLEASE NOTE As our first commenter mentions there are reports on Flyertalk that Citi is attempting to charge cash advance fees on new account fundings using their credit cards. If you have a cash advance limit of $0.00 I find it extremely hard to believe they can justify that action. But as always YMMV (your mileage may vary) and indeed this info may indeed be too late for the party using your Citi card to fund Citi accounts. But how about using it to fund some other bank’s accounts. The info on “preset limit cards” is valid. Upon further investigation of the Flyertalk thread I cannot recommend this maneuver using Citicards with Citibank accounts.