Back in May 2011, our Discover card accounts were given access to participate in the Money Messenger program, which allowed one to send money person-to-person via PayPal, but without any fees when using your Discover card to fund the transaction. From reading around, it appeared not everyone had the ability to use the program, and not everyone had the same limits.
All three of our families Discover cards were limited to sending $200 per day, and $500 per month. After messing around with the system and discussing with Discover, it appeared the month was established based off your initial transaction date, not a calendar month. So if you first sent money on the 10th, you would have to wait until at least the 10th of the subsequent month.
I liked having the ability to send money to another person free of charge. In addition, one could earn cashback bonus on the transaction, ensuring $5 (Discover More/Discover IT) or 500 free miles (Discover Miles) each month.
The problem was the really low limits. While the limits were in place to prevent abuse of the system, having to visit the site 3 times per month to complete the full $500 in transfers was a bit cumbersome. In addition, the small amount of rewards earned was not really all that worth the effort.
I used the Money Messenger service a couple of times, but never used the program enough to make any type of difference.
This week I received notice that Discover card is discontinuing the Money Messenger service effective October 10, 2013.
Why has Money Messenger been discontinued?
The decision to discontinue Money Messenger was not easy, but doing so will allow us to better focus on delivering products and services that provide value and convenience to more Discover cardmembers.
Will Money Messenger be coming back?
Currently we do not have plans to reinstate Money Messenger. Please contact your bank or pursue other person-to-person payment options.
While it is disappointing to see a feature going away, the program provided little value to the customer due to the low limits, and likely was not a profitable venture for Discover.
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Source: Discover
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