Visa Gift Cards No Longer Work for Tax Payments with OfficialPayments

Quick tip for those who use Visa gift cards to pay their taxes: OfficialPayments, one of the tax payment processors, is no longer processing any type of Visa gift cards as debit cards.

Some people like to liquidate Visa gift cards by paying taxes with them. The fee is around $2.50 per card. The issue is that you can only make two tax payments per quarter per payment processor.

To get around this problem, some people use OfficialPayments since they allow wrapping multiple Visa gift cards into one payment when calling in and making the payment over the phone. Though the $2.25 fee remains for each card separately, it pushes the amount of Visa gift cards to an unlimited amount so long as all are processed during a single phone call.

Numerous Flyertalk members report that the system now rejects all sorts of Visa gift cards as payment. Presumably, they’d be able to process as credit, but that has a much higher fee.

The issue is exclusive to OfficialPayments as of now. Other processors still accept Visa gift cards as debit; as noted, there is the two-payment limit.

[READ: A Complete Guide To Paying Your Federal Taxes With A Credit Card]

It’s interesting that this crops up right after Visa told Plastiq that they can’t make mortgage/rent payments, though it’s likely unrelated since the OfficialPayments issue affects debit only, presumably.

Hat tip to reader Testing

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

45 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

Badman
Badman (@guest_1117523)
December 27, 2020 13:09

meta vgc works for me on Dec 20 for OfficialPayments.

Yu
Yu (@guest_984588)
May 21, 2020 22:40

so does VGC works with the other two processors to pay tax?

lilurbanachiever
lilurbanachiever (@guest_984584)
May 21, 2020 22:34

The problem remains, the system recognizes the card as debit but would not process my payment. Nice to see a thread about this here so I do not have to worry too much.

iyuiyoiu
iyuiyoiu (@guest_559349)
February 9, 2018 17:02

pay tax using itunes gift card

Curtis
Curtis (@guest_544664)
December 31, 2017 13:32

Successfully used Green Dot VGCs from Walmart to pay via Official Payments just now.

rfclub
rfclub (@guest_512332)
November 9, 2017 18:07

Just tried today.

One Vanilla Visa prepaid: tried twice, both failed.
US Bank MCGC: first time failed, 2nd time success.

Jeff H
Jeff H (@guest_494221)
October 15, 2017 07:10

Using Official Payments for 2017 estimated income tax payment:

10-06-2017 Nebraska Department of Revenue Individual Income Tax $495.05 Walmart VCG
Greendot debit Visa

09-01-2017 Nebraska Department of Revenue Individual Income Tax $500.00 Discover IT

MonetaryDragon
MonetaryDragon (@guest_470934)
September 3, 2017 22:44

I can finally report that MasterCard gift cards still work at OfficialPayments. I just drained one that I got from the Giant 4X gas points promotion.

Kig
Kig (@guest_549736)
January 11, 2018 03:31

Just used a Bancorp Vanilla MCGC at OfficialPayments successfully.

MonetaryDragon
MonetaryDragon (@guest_434973)
July 7, 2017 00:00

Has anyone has success using a MasterCard gift card at OfficialPayments recently? Is the VGC shutdown limited to VGCs, or are MGCs affected too?

Dan
Dan (@guest_426763)
June 24, 2017 15:43

Does anyone have DP on paying tax via VGC in the last several days? Which site is still working?

MonetaryDragon
MonetaryDragon (@guest_434969)
July 6, 2017 23:58

I just made a Federal tax payment with a VGC using PayUSAtax.com. All indications are that Pay1040 is working for VGCs also.