What is spending reserve?

Spending reserve allows you to use money in your vaults to cover new transactions when there are insufficient funds in your main spending balance. New transactions include debit card transactions, ACH transfers, sending money to people, checks, and bill payments.

When you create your first vault, you will be prompted to choose your reserve setting. If you want to change this setting in the future, click on vaults to go to your vault dashboard and then click on the reserve spending link. From here, you can toggle the feature on or off by selecting Yes or No.

If spending reserve is not enabled, only your available spending balance will be used to determine whether to approve or decline a transaction. If spending reserve is enabled, both your available spending balance and your vaults will be used to determine whether to approve or decline a transaction, and money can be automatically moved from your vaults to your spending balance to allow a transaction to be approved. Money will be moved from the vault with the highest amount first.

There are a limited number of cases where your main SoFi Money spending balance can go negative and money will be automatically moved from your vaults regardless of your Spending Reserve choice. These cases include:

1. Checks and ACHs deposited into your spending balance that are returned or reversed.

2. Debit card purchases that pre-authorize a lower amount than the final transaction amount (examples include gas station purchases and restaurant tips).

Note: Spending reserve is only available for SoFi Money accounts at this time and is not a feature that can be used for our Checking & Savings accounts.