Fee-Free Amex Gift Cards at CVS, $50 Amex Gift Card for $45 with Chime

The stars aligned and we have gift card deals at CVS and a Chime offer at CVS running concurrently.

Fee Free Amex

We previously reported that from November 23 – November 26, CVS is running a promotion that you can buy Amex gift cards with no activation fee. You’ll pay the load amount with no additional fees. (As an aside, I noticed in Walmart that they also are offering a fee-free Amex gift card promo.)

This is great for running up spend on a credit card which has drugstores as a category bonus. Of course, we’re treading carefully with Old Blue.

There’s another CVS promotion that you can get $25 in ExtraCare Bucks with the purchase of a $100 Gap, Banana Republic, or Old Navy gift card.

Chime

Chime is currently running an offer of $5 off $50 at CVS.

Last I checked there were 97 remaining, so be sure to check that there’s still some remaining when you’re at CVS.

I was passing by my local CVS, so I stopped in and bought a $50 Amex gift card. I randomly picked the variable reload ($25-$500) Amex gift card, and I asked the cashier to load $50 on it. As expected, the register automatically did not charge me any fees – no codes or CVS card needed. My total charge was $50. Since I was short on cash, I took $40 cash-back from the register, and my total charge was $90.

Here’s my $5 Chime rebate showing instantly in my Chime account. 

All told, I paid $45 for a $50 Amex gift card, which I’ll unload at Target via AFT.

One interesting thing is that as per the Chime Fee-Schedule, there’s supposed to be a $2.50 fee for ATM and POS cash-withdrawals. It does not appear that I got any fee assessed for the $40 cash that I took from the register. I’d guess that when Chime refers to “POS cash-withdrawals” they are referring to a cash-advance at the bank and not to debit cash-back at retailers. I’ll update this post if Chime tacks on a fee, but for now I’m assuming that there won’t be any fee. (When I was making the transaction, I completely forgot about the possibility of being hit with a fee.)

Split Tender

Tip: Our friend Grant gives us a tip for using the Chime card at CVS. He says that the CVS POS automatically “eats up” the balance of gift/prepaid cards; the cashier doesn’t need to enter any info to get the split-tender to work.

If you want to purchase a $500 Amex gift card, for example, you can load your Chime card with exactly $50, swipe the Chime card without telling the cashier a thing, and the CVS POS system will drain the $50 balance and leave you with a $450 balance to pay with a regular credit card.

Referral link:If you don’t yet have a Chime card, I’d appreciate if you sign up using my referral link: LINK.  I’ll get a $10 referral credit from Chime if you open a Chime account (using this link) and add $50 to the account in your first funding.