Chase QuickPay NOT RECOMMENDED

[casascius]

Chase QuickPay is a neato service that allows Chase customers to transfer money from one Chase account holder to another (instantly), as well as non-Chase customers (but not instantly).  Chase's website bills the QuickPay service for, among other things, being perfect for accepting payments for transactions made online.  That is, if you could count on Chase not to reverse the payments just because they feel like it.

I have had the following horror story happen exactly twice, on two completely separate sales paid through Chase-to-Chase QuickPay, three or four weeks apart:

1. I receive funds with QuickPay.  No problem.  (And I accept them online).

2. At some point in the same or next day, I find out that Chase has REVERSED the funds transfers, locked out my account, and locked out the payer's account.  The first time this happened, my business was locked out of an account and access to a balance that was orders of magnitude larger than the payment I received, for over half a day because they wanted the person who PAID ME, half the continent away, to visit a Chase branch and prove his identity.  Their call center was very explicit in telling me that MY account would not be unlocked until that guy visited his branch.

3. Once my account was unlocked, the payments remained REVERSED (CANCELED), the funds returned to the payer (WHO DID NOT ASK FOR THEM TO BE RETURNED OR EVER CLAIM FRAUD), and Chase told me I needed to ask for the payer to make the transfer again.  Chase was very clear: they "could not" push the transfers through, they were canceled and that was that.

4. Both times, I was fortunate enough to have the payer contact me, prove his identity at Chase as asked, and pay me again without hesitation.

Neither time was Chase concerned about me selling "bitcoins" like PayPal is, they were more concerned about hacked accounts.  In my mind, this is a perfectly good reason to lock out an account pending a phone call and perhaps a password change, and to put funds on hold, even for several days.

What I think is unacceptable is them locking out a RECIPIENT business account to check on the identity of a SENDER of a relatively small amount of funds, and most importantly, their unilateral and arbitrary reversal of the transactions.  And there's not much that can be done - not only is Chase "too big to fail", they're apparently "too big to care".

Bottom line?  Chase QuickPay carries a chargeback risk that practically exceeds that of PayPal, because you get surprise chargebacks if you even appear on Chase's fraud radar, even when the customer asserts no such claim.  I can't imagine what the outcome would be if the customer made up a story and claimed it WAS fraud and that he wanted his money back.

[xenon481]

I have learned to never deal with Chase in any way shape or form.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Not only that, but they have stupid password requirements and there is no way to get it back if you forget it. When I contacted support, I got no answer.

[Stephen Gornick]

4. Both times, I was fortunate enough to have the payer contact me, prove his identity at Chase as asked, and pay me again without hesitation.

+1 for human nature  (most people are honest).

I've added an entry fro Chase and added mention of this thread on:
  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_methods

[toffoo]

When I first read your post about problems using Chase QuickPay, I planned on chiming in by saying 'thanks for sharing your experiences, but for another viewpoint, I've been using QuickPay for dozens of transactions and have yet to have any kind problem'.  I'm glad I didn't, because now I've also had a problem ... a serious one:

Late last week, a few of us in #bitcoin-otc were scammed by someone (GPG-registered and positively rated in the Web of Trust) who was buying Bitcoins and paying with a stolen/hacked Chase QuickPay account.

The first I realized something was amiss was when I tried to sign into my Chase online banking the next morning and was unable to, with a message saying my online access had been locked out and I'd need to call blah blah number to fix it.

After wasting 2.5 hours on hold and being passed around like a hot potato between no less than 7 different Chase "telephone bankers" and call centers, they still could not tell me anything useful about what was wrong with my account or why I was being locked out.  (Lots of conflicting/wrong stories and excuses, but nothing helpful or correct.)

It was only after I was contacted by some of the other #bitcoin-otc traders who had been scammed was I able to piece together what happened.

Armed with this information, I wasted another 2 hours on calls with Chase the next day, me TELLING THEM what I think happened to my account, and asking what needed to be done to alleviate the situation and get my account working again.

Apparently, the other scam victims had better experiences than I with Chase's customer service and got to the bottom of what happened, but if it weren't for them I would still be left wondering to this day why my account was frozen.

Unfortunately, the bottom line for all of us was the same: our accounts would all be PERMANENTLY closed, the fraudulent payments to us would of course be voided, and in order to get to our money or access our accounts again we would need to GO TO A CHASE branch and open a completely new account and wait 5-7 days, blah blah, etc.

Of course none of us will be getting any of our stolen Bitcoins back, nor will we be receiving any help from Chase to get to the bottom of this little cybercrime.  Rather than being treated as the victim of a crime, and being backed up or helped out in any way by our bank, we are being made to suffer as if we did something wrong here.

I had my account at Chase since the mid-90's, never had a major problem, and it will be a major headache and inconvenience for me to change all my bank account details for all the things I use it for.  After trying to speak to three different managers and explaining that there would be no way that I could get to a Chase branch any time soon and PLEASE do not close my account, I finally had to tell them: if you are going to close my account, go right ahead ... I won't be opening another one.  I am now permanently an ex-Chase customer.


After getting my PayPal account frozen around the time that Coinpal was shut down, I had been relying on QuickPay more and more to do my online transactions.  I liked it, because of three benefits: 1.) it is fast (the money shows up in your account a lot faster than with Dwolla or similar), 2.) it's free, 3.) and if you only deal with other Chase customers (as I tried to) I thought it was a bit more secure than most of the other ACH or credit card based alternatives.


Unfortunately, at this time there still really is no perfect online payments alternative to use to trade Bitcoins.  Given the points mentioned above, I thought Chase QuickPay was about as good of as option as exists at the time, but unfortunately "the fraud card" pretty much trumps any of the possible alternatives.  Given Chase's heavy-handed (or downright retarded) response to my problem, after going through this unfortunate experience I can now also concur with casascius: Chase QuickPay NOT RECOMMENDED!

[EPiSKiNG]

My account was closed by Chase.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16613

[niemivh]

I have learned to never deal with Chase in any way shape or form.

Fuck Chase.