Amazon Allowance Cracks Down on Grandfathered $.50 Loads

Amazon Allowance allows us to automatically add money to an Amazon account on a steady basis for yourself or others. They used to allow $.50 allowances, same as their $.50 reloads, but then they switched it a year ago to a minimum $5 load.

Until now, allowance loads of under $5 which were previously set up continued so long as the allowance wasn’t changed in any way.

A couple people (1, 2) recently noted that those <$5 loads are now coming with a ‘payment error’ message and aren’t going through. Apparently, Amazon has now stopped the grandfathered small loads.

Going forward, the best option is to manually reload your Amazon balance $.50 at a time. It’s also possible to buy e-gift cards and apply them to your account, but those now have a minimum $1 purchase amount.

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