As you all know by now, Discover has made it clear that they intend to enforce the new rule of not paying out for gift card purchases made under the Apple Pay promo, albeit with some slight leeway.
Let’s try to find alternative ways to maximize this offer as well as we can without gift cards.
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Option #1 – Buy Gift Cards
found here
Okay, we’re trying to write about not buying gift cards. But my point is that Discover doesn’t actually know if you bought a gift card or not. It seems they are just flagging high dollar purchases (or possibly repeat purchases). You may want to try sticking in some small gift cards here and there as you shop.
Option #2 – Go Shopping
Here is a list of places that accept Apple Pay, but those are not all the options.
We mentioned that Best Buy now accepts Apple Pay as well (although not all cashiers aren’t yet aware of this, we’re teaching them slowly, one-by-one!) and it’s not showing clearly on the main Apple page. There are many other stores as well which accept Apple Pay. Even your local supermarket, such as Shoprite, may accept it. Or a small restaurant may surprisingly be NFC-enabled. There is mention on Reddit of some 7-Eleven stores and some Texaco and Chevron’s accepting NFC payments.
In short, look out for the NFC payment signs anywhere and everywhere you go shopping. Typically, any NFC-enabled register will work for Apple Pay, it doesn’t have to say ‘Apple Pay’ specifically.
Here are a few apps which can help you find which stores are NFC-enabled.
- Pay Finders, made specifically for Apple Pay (HT: @benarp)
- MasterCard Nearby App, unselect all options besides ‘contactless’ to sort (HT: Reddit)
- MasterCard Contactless Merchant Search (HT: MMS)
Also, keep in mind that Discover has department stores and clothing stores as part of the Q4 5% category bonus. See if you can find a store which qualifies and also accepts Apple Pay. We’ve written previously some possible opportunities: Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Aerostaple, American Eagle Outfitters, Express, Foot Locker, Footaddiction, Nike & Sports Authority.
Option #3 – Buy Electronics
If you have any new electronics to buy or that you think you’ll need soon, consider purchasing them in a Best Buy store or in an Apple store to take advantage of this deal. Typically, this isn’t a good idea since you’ll be losing out on the portal, but at 10-20% back it could be worthwhile. Remember, Best Buy and Staples do price matching and you should be able to get a competitive price from them that way.
Personally, I have a $349 Mac warranty on the to-do list. Hopefully, I’ll pass by an Apple store and be able to get 20% off that charge by paying with Apple Pay.
Option #4 – Cellphone Bill
T-Mobile is on the list of stores that accept Apple Pay and presumably you can pay your post-paid or prepaid cellular bill in store with Apple Pay. Most cellular providers allow you to overpay your bill online; if they’ll let you do that in-store then you can pay out your cell bill for the next while and lock in the 10-20% discount with Apple Pay.
[Just keep in mind that if you have a post-paid plan, there is a different deal available currently of $10 off $75 with an Amex Offer. That offer just gets you ~13% off, but it’s easier as it can be done online and it doesn’t require fighting with Discover over it. Overall many may prefer it.]
Another interesting thing that occurred to me is to purchase phone refill cards to pay for your prepaid cellular bill. These can be purchased in Walgreens, Best Buy and many other NFC-enabled stores. Just be careful to verify that they’ll work for your plan. (They usually work for prepaid plans, not postpaid, and they may not work for all plans.)
The big question here is whether phone refills will classify as a gift card. I tried pushing Discover’s media team on Twitter for an answer, but they wouldn’t budge from their ‘call in’ attitude and thus we don’t have any public statement on this.
I think if you pushed hard enough you can get this one to work since buying a phone refill is more like paying up your prepaid phone bill to Walgreens who forwards it to your cellular carrier, similar to paying your cell bill directly to your carrier. But there’s no guarantee Discover will honor it.
If this works, it would mean that anyone with almost any prepaid plan can prepay out the next year’s worth (or whatever) of their cell bill and lock in the Apple Pay discount.
Option #5 – Reselling Merchandise
Many are looking into reselling merchandise to max out on the $10k with Apple Pay. Staples and Best Buy are favorites there. Keep out an eye for the Black Friday deals as well.
Note that you’ll still have to submit receipts for these since Discover is denying most large purchases, but they should come through with a claim.
Option #6 – eBay $5 Promo
You can resell using the eBay $5 promo if you were targeted for it. Yeah, I know, this is reselling again, but it’s really an awesome offer and warrants separate mention.
The eBay seller fees are usually 10% (for ordinary sellers); using this targeted offer there is a max fee of just $5.
We mentioned this offer quickly in a roundup post some time ago. At the time, we were still hoping/assuming that Apple Pay would work with gift cards and reselling wasn’t a pressing agenda for anyone. If you are considering jumping into reselling to maximize the Discover promo, this eBay offer is really an awesome deal.
You could potentially go to an Apple store and buy up iPads or iWatches or iPhones and resell them on eBay for the amount you paid, without paying much in fees at all. Let’s say you buy something for $500 and sell it on eBay for the same.
- Pay $5 to eBay, or 1%
- Pay 2.9% to Paypal
- Spend $5-$10 in shipping, or 1-2%
- Total fees: 5-6%
- Update: I completely forgot about sales tax (which most states have) and will make a significant hit to your bottom line
If you get 22% back from Discover and take a 5% hit on the sale, you’re still up 17%. And the beauty of this idea is that you can do many thousands of dollars in one trip to an Apple store; no dealing with buying one $300 iPad at a time from Staples. Not all items, of course, will sell on eBay for the same amount you paid in an Apple Store, but you may be able to find some items that do.
It’s important to stress that there are risks here and it’s probably not worth it for someone who doesn’t have experience with reselling, but for some this can be an option. I’m not sure I’ll use this eBay offer for the Apple Pay deal since I don’t have enough experience with it, but I do intend to make use of the eBay offer for some gift card sales and to get rid of a few things that I’ve been meaning to get rid of for a while. Empty out your closets, folks!
Any other good ideas to maximize the Apple Pay promo? Hit the comments!
