Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Yesterday, via my Quick Deals page, I published a warning that our favorite three letter drugstore may stop allowing credit card purchases of reload cards. If the rumor is true, we may need to find other ways to manufacture credit card spend in order to meet minimum spend requirements for new signup offers, get big-spend bonuses, etc. Below are my top 8 suggestions, and one catch-all #9…
1) Buy and cash out gift cards with PINs
Visa and MasterCard gift cards allow setting PINs. In some cases, such as with OneVanilla cards, the PIN is set automatically the first time you use the card as a debit card. In other cases, the PIN is, by default, the last four digits of the card number. And, with other cards, it is necessary to call in and set the PIN. Once you have a PIN for your gift card, it’s possible to use it as a debit card at some locations to buy money orders, pay bills, or reload prepaid cards (such as Bluebird). You generally cannot use the PIN to get out cash at an ATM. The trick is to buy Visa or MasterCard gift cards as cheaply as possible (with your credit card), and then find the most convenient and economical option for cashing them out.
2) Use gift cards to pay bills with Evolve Money. UPDATE Evolve Money has shut down services
Evolve Money is an online service that allows you to make many types of bill payments (mortgage, student loan, car payments, etc.) for free. The best part is that it allows you to pay with Visa and MasterCard gift cards. So, buy Visa or MasterCard gift cards as cheaply as possible (with your credit card), and then use them to pay bills online. You can read more about this service here: “Pay bills online with debit and prepaid cards.”
3) Pay friends with Amazon Payments. No longer available
Use Amazon Payments to pay friends or family members, with a credit card, with no fee. Amazon does limit each person to a maximum of $1000 sent per month. So, many people setup circles where they pay friend B, and friend B pays friend C, and friend C pays them. Generally if you pay just one other person back and forth without making a wider circle, you may be at risk of getting your Amazon Payments account shut down (but that won’t affect your regular Amazon account).
4) Load Serve
If you have a Serve account, you can load it up to $1000 per month ($200 per day) with a credit card (and another $1000 per month with a debit card, but this post is about increasing credit card spend so I won’t mention that).
5) Make Kiva loans
Kiva is a nonprofit organization that provides micro-loans to enterprising individuals around the world so that they may earn their own way out of poverty. One great feature of Kiva is that you can make loans using your credit card. Kiva currently reports that 98.94% of loans have paid back, but its possible to do much better than that by avoiding risky loans. For details, please see: “Minimum spend requirements? Kivalens to the rescue.”
6) Pay your taxes
If you need to pay end of year tax payments or ongoing estimated tax payments, you can pay with a credit card. The IRS maintains a web page (here) that shows all of the services you can use to pay by credit card, and it lists the current fees. Currently, the lowest credit card fees are 1.87% via PayTaxUSA and ValueTaxPayment.com (they’re both the same company: WorldPay US). Due to the fees, paying taxes with your credit card only makes sense if you need the extra spend to meet minimum spend requirements, reach a big-spend threshold, or if your credit card rewards are worth more than 1.87 cents per dollar. See more here: Buying miles and points and cash from the IRS with credit cards.
7) Load and unload the American Express for Target card. UPDATE 1/12/2016: The American Express for Target card has been discontinued
The American Express for Target card is interesting because you can reload it at Target with a credit card (and the reload counts as a purchase). The downsides? It has higher fees than Bluebird or Serve, it has no bill pay feature, and it’s not a debit card. The best way to unload money from this card is to find a no-fee or very low cost ATM. For complete details, see “Using the Target Amex card to run up spend.”
8) Buy and sell
This option is not for the faint of heart. The idea is to to use your credit card to buy things that can be easily resold. The goal, generally, is to earn lots of points while breaking even on spend (or even earning a profit). There are a lot of risks in doing this and likely tax implications as well. If you do decide to try this out, I recommend starting small and with items that you understand well. Make sure to take advantage of the best sales, shopping portal offers, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, please see “Tips for selling on Amazon.”
9) Miscellaneous others
There are many other approaches beyond the options I listed above. Some people like to buy and return items, but that crosses the line for me (see “Drawing the line”). Some people increase spend by opening new bank accounts that can be funded by credit card. Riskier approaches include gambling online and investing online (more here). Do you have any favorite approaches that I missed in this list? Please comment below.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
FYI, I just wrote an updated article on my experience using Loyal3 to MS $8,000 now that they lowered their cc purchase limit: http://yourpfpro.com/racking-miles-points-loyal3/
[…] 9 ways to cope without reload cards […]
[…] 9 ways to cope without reload cards. By Frequent Miler. […]
Can I use Amex gift cards to buy VR cards at CVS? Will CVS consider it as a credit card transaction and decline or is it considered as a debit card transaction?
You can do that until your CVS stores go cash-only. It doesn’t look like they’ll accept debit cards anyway, but even if they did, Amex gift cards can only be used as credit cards.
Hi, just visited 2 CVS in the Houston area suburbs today and was able to purchase VR cards using CC. The cashier however, pointed out that by 04/03/14, they will only accept cash or debit on all re-loadable cards.
I’m not sure why you would post about specific ways to use GCs with Pins. That is the last reliable method to load BB and earn points. In addition, it has another great use that you mentioned in this post. We’re in a bunch of trouble if all stores start checking cards and looking for our names to be on them. In summary, I understand you have money to make. But, please consider the viability of a deal if beginning MSers start arguing with cashiers or showing their cards to the folks processing the transactions.
Maybe you should get a job so that you don’t have to depend on gift cards so much.
Just visited a CVS in the suburbs of DC (Gaithersburg) for the second time today for another 5K (after GMT reset). Without prompting, the cashier told me “this is coming to an end!” as if he was ending my evil reign (no joke). I tried not to laugh, played dumb and asked him what he was referring to, and he showed me the memo saying the reload cards (all the ones from the original memo) would be cash only as of 4/4. Not sure if it meant that 4/4 would be the last day or 4/3.
I tried to take a picture but he wouldnt allow it without his managers permission. When his manager came around I asked him, and he wouldnt even let me see the memo (but the clerk already had). In any case, unfortunately, this is no april fools joke.
The game changes, but the game goes on.
@Mario When I was traveling in South Florida I had very good luck buying them at a Circle K gas with a 5X Freedom card……..mid February……..I recommend going when they are not busy as it will stress them and you out if you back up the gas pay line as they have to activate the cards on a different machine than a cash register……..but they had the cards and they took CC so if I lived there I think I would bookmark their site locator……………..
Did the charge get coded as “gas”?
It did for me on my Freedom
Just to add to the info, tried our favorite 3 letter store for VR in South Jersey a week ago and they accepted credit cards, went to 3 stores today and all said cash only… its all over folks and I think we know why…
The damn bloggers, right?
I’m in Florida and yesterday had mixed results. One store accepted a $500 cc purchase with no problem while the other asked for an alternate form of payment (machine rejected, not the store clerk). Anyone know of other places to buy with a cc?
Sane way to deal with the uncertain times………..So the only option to keep bluebird alive is with a debit card/gift card daily download of $100 per day/$1000 per month…..????That will get old real quick….
Have you posted a guide to paying taxes with gift/debit cards or is it just credit card/Suntrust debit that works?
You can’t even use gift cards for loading, just real debit cards. You can set it up once per month to automatically load $100 per day, so it’s not too horrible. Yes, I’ve written about paying taxes many times. I’ll do a summary post soon.
Maybe this sudden splash of publicity is an advertising campaign for Vanilla Network. I’m sure they figured by now where their income comes from. 😀
Why has this ended? Idiots. Hoards of idiot zombie users who folioed the circles and arrows, and do stupid things like try to by $10,000 worth at a time, and when they run into trouble, they call the corporate headquarters asking why they can’t get a free trip to Tahiti. Idiot bloggers who only care about making a quick buck off the rubes’ credit card applications and explain ever single step in such excruciating detail that a dead rock could follow the instructions.
So now you idiots have killed this. Every idiot blogger is now explaining how to kill the next deal to all the simpletons who aparently can’t figure out how to put on their underpants in the morning without circles and arrows providing all the instructions.
What a shock it will be when then next item on your list gets killed off. Gee, thanks for that.
Bloggers ruin everything.
LOL, LOL, LOL, Burt K, this world is a terrible place, you should end it all now, I heard that in the afterworld there are no bloggers and you can MS for free everywhere!! check it out Burt…..
Oh shut up!
If you can find AMEX gifts cards with no fee, what would be the best way to liquidate them?
https://frequentmiler.com/2013/10/16/how-to-spend-down-amex-gift-cards/
[…] Link – Frequent Miler […]