Vanilla Reloads

What Is A Vanilla Reload Card?

Vanilla reloads (often shortened to VR or VRs) are a type of pre-paid gift/credit card. They’ve become popular with consumers trying to maximize their cash back and bonus points or hit minimum spends as they can be purchased with credit cards at some retailers.

How Does Using A Vanilla Reload Card Help Reach Minimum Spends/Increase Points Earned?

By themselves a VR will not help a consumer hit their minimum spends, as a consumer could simply use their credit card for purchases they’d make with their VR. What most savy consumers do is use VR’s in conjunction with American Express’ Bluebird Checking Account.

Bluebird acts as a regular checking account, this lets consumers pay rent, mortgages, student loans or get cash out which isn’t possible on a regular credit card without paying hefty fees. You can upload a maximum of $1,000 per day to Bluebird using VRs.

Vanilla Reload Fees & Restrictions

• Fee of $3.95 charged per card
• Minimum load of $20
• Maximum load of $500

Vanilla Reload Locations

You can purchase vanilla reloads from the following locations. We’ve linked to that stores, store locator to make it easier to find your local store. * indicates that this chain doesn’t allow vanilla reloads to be paid for by credit card at any of their locations, ^ indicates that credit cards are disallowed at some of their locations. Nothing next to the name indicates that ALL locations accept credit cards.

• CVS Pharmacy^ – usually has a limit of $1,000 per day per customer in VRs, some stores have increased this limit to $5,000.
• Walgreens^, daily limit of $500 per customer
• Dollar General^, cannot be used to load money onto a bluebird account
• Family Dollar^, cannot be used to load money onto a bluebird account
• Fred’s^, cannot be used to load money onto a bluebird account
• 7/11*
• Office Depot*

A full list can be found by clicking here. CVS and Walgreens are the only places that currently stock Vanilla Reloads and allow credit card purchases. Not all stores accept credit card purchases for these prepaid credit cards, so be consumers should be sure to check their closest few stores. Some CVS stores keep VRs behind the counter so ask if the rack looks empty.

Another popular method is to load a bluebird account with gift cards through Walmart.

Credit Cards That Count As A Cash Advance:

The following cards do count as a cash advance when purchasing vanilla reloads from CVS:

The following cards do not count as a cash advance:

• Barclays Arrival