Loyal3 is a popular website in which users can purchase fractional stocks in a variety of companies for no commission or fee. The catch is that the stocks are not purchased instantly, and instead are purchased in large batches to keep the costs down for the company. Popular stocks included Coca-Cola, AMC Theaters, Abercrombie and Fitch, Amazon and Apple, to name a few.
Here is the great thing about Loyal3 – they allow payments for stocks using credit cards and debit cards. Many users bought stocks and then sold them (sometimes for a profit) in order to accumulate credit card rewards. Effective Tuesday 11/18/2014, users will no longer be able to use a credit card to fund their purchases, and will instead need to do an ACH transfer of funds for all transactions.
A letter was sent out today explaining the changes:
Hi James,
We’ve had an amazing 2014, introducing more IPOs to the general public than ever before – with brands such as Santander Consumer USA, GoPro and Dave & Buster’s. And we’ve added many new stocks, including most recently, Kraft Foods.
Through the success, we’ve also learned a lot about how people use LOYAL3. Credit cards have become a common method for people “gaming” LOYAL3 to gain credit card points and not for the purpose of investing. This increases our costs and subtracts from our mission of making it easy, affordable and fee-free for people to invest in the brands they love.
In order to put an end to the “gaming” of LOYAL3, and to maintain fee-free investing, on Tuesday, 11/18/2014, we will be removing credit and debit cards from the LOYAL3 platform. Automatic Monthly Plans (monthly recurring investments) using credit and debit cards will continue to be active until Thursday, 12/11/2014, to allow time to switch over to ACH (checking account transfers).
Setting up ACH instructions takes a couple minutes. You’ll need your checking account and routing numbers: both can be found on a check, as shown below.
To set-up your ACH instructions, please visit my profile page, and click on “Add a checking account.”
Once your account is funded, you will have the ability to complete same day trades on those placed before 2pm EST.
If you have questions, we’re here to help.
Sincerely,
LOYAL3
Email: support@loyal3.com
Phone: 855.256.9253
Users will have only a few weeks to transfer all of their payment options to their bank account. I used (but now, no longer) Loyal3, but found their customer service to be less than stellar – and if anything, not of a place you would want to do businesses with, especially concerning financials and large sums of money.
There’s an interesting forum on FlyerTalk explaining the service and how it was used.
You can visit Loyal3’s website here for more information.
Did you have any experiences using Loyal3? Will this change effect you?
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
I loved it and had been using it for months. I am really mad at the points-chasers that bought and dumped and now got all of us thrown out. I wrote Loyal3 when I got their email and explained that they were throwing out the baby with the bathwater, since they would also be losing investors like me who, though I primarily trade via E-Trade, Ameritrade, and Fidelity, I had moved a fair amount over to L3 just to use the credit cards. So, that gig is up, thanks to the greedy abusers. As usual, the poor behavior of a few hurts the many. Sigh.