Like many of my friends, I have an Amazon.com Visa credit card and it works great, generating rewards for me and letting me buy all sorts of things from these transaction credits. What I’d like is to have the bank email me every time a transaction occurs, however, so I can keep an eye on everything that’s going on, including occasional use by my spouse or children. I know some credit card companies offer this customer alert sort of service. Does Amazon [ed: Chase Bank]?
You’re in luck because I also have an Amazon credit card, as issued by Chase Bank. Turns out Chase actually runs a zillion credit card services and uses the same backend secure servers and Web interface for them all, so even if yu don’t have an Amazon card but have something else issued by Chase Bank, odds are extremely good you can set up email — or sms text message — notifications for every transaction or just those that fit a specific profile.
I’ll show you how I set it up for my own account, but don’t be surprised that I have masked out a number of data items, most obviously including my card number and account balance. It’s not that I don’t like you, dear reader, but, um, just that it’s kinda not for public dissemination. 🙂
I’ll also add before we start that this sort of per-transaction notification is a really smart idea and helps you have a better sense of what’s going on with your account. I find it particularly invaluable when I sign up for an online subscription service and then forget about it. Nothing like seeing a $49.95 transaction that you don’t recognize to spur you into a bit of investigation and prompt cancellation. Heck, even $9.95 is motivating, and it’s far easier than going line-by-line through your statement on a monthly basis.
Chase lets you log in through https://www.chase.com/ but don’t click on my link! In fact, don’t every click on any link that’s going to take you to a financial site. Instead, type in the URL directly to your browser. Much safer. Then double check on the browser address bar to ensure you are where you think you are and that the connection’s secure. If it isn’t, don’t proceed.
Okay, so you’ve logged in. Here’s what you’ll be seeing:
Like I said, I kinda blanked out most of the interesting information. 🙂 Still, what you seek is on the lower right. Let’s zoom in:
It’s choice #2 that we want: “Manage Account Alerts”. Click on it and…
If you’ve authorized a cellphone, the choices are even more complex because each rule lets you send a message to your email box or your phone. Then each line looks like this:
Once you have everything set up as you prefer, save it and you’ll get a confirmation screen:
And that’s all there is to it. You can see that I have notifications enabled for most all transactions. Remember, all of this is in addition to your monthly statement and to the ongoing activity log and history you can find on the site at any time.
Hope that helps you keep tabs on your credit card transactions with Amazon/Chase!