American Express Nerfs Their Campus Edition Card Starting March 1, 2015

In case you didn’t know American Express has a prepaid card called the American Express Campus Edition card. In the past it was possible to reload this card at registers of select campus bookstores using a credit card. There was a $3.95 fee charged and you could only load $500 at a time but this was still a good manufactured spending technique for those with a credit card that earns at a high rate on bookstore purchases. I was personally using my Sallie Mae credit card which was earning me 5-5.5% cash back.

American Express has just sent an e-mail out to cardholders of the Campus Edition card and the changes are bad, real bad.

• Starting March 1st, 2015 you will no longer be able to load your Campus Edition at participating campus bookstores. This means no more credit card reloads.
• Starting February 1st, 2015 you will no longer be able to purchase and load Green Dot Money Paks onto your card.

You were only able to load $6,000 per year (card member year, not calendar) so this isn’t a huge loss for me, although some people were able to get around this limit by signing up for a new card. I know some readers were following my advice to purchase the temporary cards to get 4%+ cash back everywhere which is also no longer possible as American Express have pulled these from the shelves.

For those of you thinking about getting a card for a quick little manufactured spending before this is closed in three months, you’re also out of luck as it’s no longer possible to sign up for this card.

Thanks to Frequent Miler & View From The Wing for making me aware of this change.