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Amazon Payments has long been the best way to increase credit card spend, for free. The trick was to use Amazon Payments to pay friends up to $1000 per month, with a credit card. And, to get your money back, you would have your friends pay you the same way. Unfortunately, as of October 13th, Amazon will no longer allow person to person payments.
Goodbye Amazon Payments lady. I felt I knew you well. You always seemed so happy sending money to friends while sitting in coach. You’ll be missed.
So, now that its October, its time to get in that last bit of free manufactured spend before its too late.
Tip: Liquidate gift cards
Amazon Payments can be used to liquidate Amex, Visa, and MasterCard gift cards, but you need to be careful when adding the gift card to your account. When you first add the card to your account, enter in the wrong expiration date. Then, after the card is in your account, change to the correct expiration date. The reason for this convoluted approach is that Amazon will try to put a $1 authorization on your card when you first add it in. If this happens, you won’t be able to liquidate the entire card. By putting in the wrong expiration date first, this won’t happen.
Tip: Get 5% Discover Cash Back
This quarter, Discover is offering 5% cash back for online shopping and department store purchases. In the past, Amazon Payments has qualified for the online shopping bonus!
Tip: Do not expect to get a credit card Amazon.com bonus
The Chase Freedom card offers 5X this quarter at Amazon.com, Zappos, and select department stores. Even though the Amazon Payments service is provided by Amazon.com, credit card charges do not usually get bonuses the same way. Do not expect to get 5X from the Freedom card. Also, do not expect to get a bonus from any card that offers Amazon.com and/or bookstore bonuses.
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Good luck on the last call with Amazon. Amazon has now taken the approach of canceling payments and closing accounts. Not a big deal, but kind of funny that this is the way they are going to finish off the Amazon Payments program. I had 12 accounts that went strong for over a year, and now they are failing left and right.
That’s truly bizarre. I don’t know why Amazon would be so aggressive when it all ends soon anyway!
I did, but since I cant figure out what’s going wrong, Im going to go back and redo everything, including that. The irony is that I’m one of the few people that rarely had an issue with “address does not match” issues from the AGCs that I ordered via portals. Thanks for your response.
Transactions using my AMEX cards are failing. Even when I tried to send $100 from a 500 card. I did a small test transaction from regular debit card and that went through. Any ideas?
Strange. Is this with Amex credit cards or gift cards?
Gift cards from CVS. I tried a few different ones.
Hate to ask the obvious, but have you called AmEx to register the cards in your name?
Chase is now listing serve as cash advance
did it start this month? in September they surely didn’t code it as cash advance…
Not necessarily. Please see my new post on this topic: https://frequentmiler.com/2014/10/03/serve-cash-advance-dont-panic-and-dont-call/