You should read this blog post by ‘Frequent Miler’.
He describes Evolve Money, a new service that will let you pay bills (for free) with prepaid debit cards and gift cards. It’s a great way to liquidate those.
They don’t publish a comprehensive list of the bills they let you pay. This service is a loss leader for them so they don’t just let you add your own merchants to pay.
But you may be able to pay your mortgage, even, with a mileage-earning debit card (like the Suntrust Delta debit card) or liquidate a MyVanilla Debit card (that you funded with Vanilla Reloads) or even MasterCard/Visa gift cards that you purchased with a credit card at a store where you earned bonus miles.
You’re allowed $1000 per day in bill payments currently.
As they say, read the whole thing.
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Thanks for the mention!
Whats the best way to buy visa/MC/amex debit gift cards in large denominations for a lowe fee?
@raj
Wouldn’t that be the AmEx gift card site? You can do personal transactions up to $5000/month, but be aware, even failed transactions count. You can, however, purchase “business” gift cards up to $75k/month, with 2%+ cashback from portals. I haven’t tried more than a few thousand myself, and not regularly, so you should probably search around to see if anyone on FT has done this before.
Good luck!
@raj
Uh, notably, the AmEx cards are *NOT* debit cards. They are gift cards.
thanks Jamesb for the info. I was also looking if anybody had ideas to use portals or websites to earn additional miles. I know 0.5% back through topcash. Anybody have any idesa to maximize debit gift card purchases?
@raj
*sigh*
The picture in the linked post clearly only shows a Visa and Mastercard logo. No using a $5000 gift card purchased from AmEx then. 🙁
So I signed up, it’s free, and for the Debit Card they are looking for Name, and address, Has only one tried this with a visa GC yet and if so, what info did you put in the fields?
@Tony- the original post on frequent miler goes into the address issues.
I once ran all over the county visiting stores which supposedly sold Vanilla Reload cards purchasable w/ a credit card. It was a myth. I wasted a lot of time and gas. After all that running around, it would’ve been cheaper to BUY miles outright, rather than try to game the system. A straightforward way to pay mortgage with a miles-earning card WOULD BE fabulous, but having to transfer the funds between 3 different cards/paysystems is a cumbersome way to track my finances. And since it never seems possible to buy the gift card w/ credit card in the first place, I don’t see how it can work.
there are places that still allow the gift card buying with cc. the info is out there. unfortunately very fedw places now, CVS being the only one i know of.
At what store can you buy a gift card with a cc? All I hear is no, no, no. No at Walmart. No at CVS. No at Walgreens. Plus no at 5 different gas stations.
@Lindy, I hear you. My local CVS–which up until just recently, allowed me to purchase Vanillas with a cc–informed me they are no longer able to accept any cc–and the clerk was nice enough to show me the corporate memo.
Please edit your post: you can use your SunTrust Debit card on Evolve Money, but you will NOT earn miles for it. Tested. Use the UFB Direct AA miles-earning card instead.
Great !!! Thank You I just used a Vanilla card I have been carrying around to pay a Wells Fargo same as cash loan. I bought the Vanilla Card at Staples using my Ink card and earned 5 points and paid a same as cash bill I got for 1 year with no interest that I had to previously pay with my checking account. It looks like I can pay my life insurance policy and Mortgage with this service as well.