Military fee waivers (SCRA and MLA)

We record a waiver per card, with dates

A waiver lives on one card, with the month it started and, if it has ended, the month it ended. It is not one switch thrown across your whole wallet. That matters because the cards in a wallet were opened on different dates, and a card opened outside the window it would need is a different answer from a card opened inside it.

Why dates, and not a single setting

The two acts key off different dates, which is why one setting cannot answer for both. The SCRA runs from an account opened before military service began. The MLA attaches at the moment the account was established, and the statute defines the service itself as a bounded stretch with a beginning and an end:

The term "period of military service" means the period beginning on the date on which a servicemember enters military service and ending on the date on which the servicemember is released from military service or dies while in military service.

Covered borrowermeans a consumer who, at the time the consumer becomes obligated on a consumer credit transaction or establishes an account for consumer credit, is a covered member … or a dependent … of a covered member.

A Guard or Reserve member can go on qualifying orders, come off them, and go back on. Dates on the card are how that stays legible, rather than a yes or no about a person.

What we checked, and where we abstain

We looked for the published military policy of 13card issuers and wrote down what we could read in each bank’s own words. For 6 of them, no fee waiver could be verified that way, or nothing readable was published at all. Those stay unverified, and an unverified issuer never produces a suggestion from us. You can still record a waiver on such a card yourself if your bank granted one; we will not state a policy we could not read.

A fee that actually posts overrides what you recorded

If your bank charges the annual fee on a card you told us is waived, we show the charge. We do not keep showing $0 because that is what you entered. Some banks post the fee and credit it back on the same statement, and some charge it because the relief no longer applies; those look identical for a few weeks, so we say what we can see and point you at your bank rather than guessing.

A waived card still shows what the fee would be

A card whose fee is waived is not a card with no fee, and we do not show it as one. The fee you would be paying stays on the card and in the math, so you can see what each card is worth to you before anything changes, rather than finding out in the month it changes.

The federal MLA database cannot answer this afterwards

Once an account exists, the regulation forbids the bank from going back to the federal MLA database to establish what your status was on the day you opened it:

At any time after a consumer has entered into a transaction or established an account involving an extension of credit, a creditor (including an assignee) may not, directly or indirectly, obtain any information from any database maintained by the Department to ascertain whether a consumer had been a covered borrower as of the date of that transaction or as of the date that account was established.

The site’s own user guide says the same thing to you, in its own words: “NOTE: Historical information is not available through this website.” Its lookup answers for today and nothing else. So the date you were covered from is a fact that has to be written down by the person who knows it, at the time, per card. That is the whole reason PointBagel asks you for a date instead of a yes or no.

To check your status as of today, use the federal MLA website at mla.dmdc.osd.mil. We never ask you for a Social Security number and we never run that lookup for you.

What this page does not tell you

Three things this page is not, stated plainly:

• It does not say which banks waive a fee. Each bank publishes its own policy and changes it without telling anyone; we keep our reading of those policies in the product, where an out-of-date row shows as an abstention instead of as a published claim.
• It does not tell you whether you qualify, and neither does PointBagel. Your bank decides that, it can decide differently later, and nothing here is legal advice about either act.
• It does not cover who else in a household may be eligible, or how any bank treats that. The published sources disagree with one another, so we do not settle it on a page; ask your bank.

If you already use PointBagel

Tell us once in your military fee waiver settings and we will offer to mark the cards it applies to. Nothing changes on a card until you confirm it, and you can undo any of it later.