One of the more popular methods at the moment for boosting your credit card spend is to purchase visa gift cards with your credit card, then load them onto your bluebird account using a Walmart money center. I’ve detailed this process before, but one of the most common questions I get is “where can I get high value gift cards for a low activation fee?”. Most visa gift cards are in $200 or less denominations and have activation fees of $5.95-$6.95, this wipes out almost any profit you can make – which is the whole point of manufactured spending.
Today I’ll show you two places you can find $500 Visa gift cards, with an activation fee of only $2:
- Simon Mall’s: All locations sell Visa gift cards for a $2 activation fee. These do not count as a cash advance (but you should’ve set your cash advance limit to $0, anyway). To purchase simply go to the information desk and ask. [Location Finder]. Not sold in the following states: NJ, CT, HI, NH, RI or VT
- Glimcher Mall’s: All locations also sell Visa gift cards for a $2 fee. These also do not count as a cash advance and can also be purchased at the information desk. [Locations Finder]
Both of these must be purchased in person, it is possible to order them online but the fees they charge are prohibitively expensive.
What Type Of Store Will These Process As?
To make best use of these cheap gift cards you’ll need to use a card that earns at a high rate for whatever these malls code as. I decided to use the Visa MCC look up tool to find out. Unfortunately when the enter the address for the mall it lists all of the shops inside the mall and their MCC’s instead of the mall/information desk.
No information desk found
Thankfully some people have already purchased these gift cards and it seems like they post as any of the following:
- Merchant Category: MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIALTY RETAIL STORES – Citi
- Category: Other – Miscellaneous – American Express
It looks like it will always process as miscellaneous and as such you’ll only get whatever your credit card pays out on all purchases. This means cards like the Barclay Arrival or American Express Fidelity will be the best options as they earn 2.2% and 2% respectively.
Update: It looks like Citi codes Simon Mall GC purchases as a department store purchase, this means other Visa cards should also code it as a department store purchase.
Let’s look at a single $500 purchase to see how much you’d make:
- Barclay Arrival 2.2% * $502 = $11.044, – $2 in fees = $9.044 profit
- American Express Fidelity 2% * $502 = $10.4, – $2 in fees = $8.4 profit
You’re not going to get super rich from either method and you’ll probably get better value if you’re after airline miles or points. Another thing to consider is that you can buy some Visa gift cards for $6.95 at supermarkets, but a lot of credit cards actually come with up to 6% cash back at supermarkets. Let’s look at the profit on that:
- Blue cash preferred 6% * $506.95 = $30.417, – $6.95 in fees = $23.467 in profit
As you can see more profit can be had elsewhere. Where these really low fees come into their own is when you’re trying to reach minimum spend requirements on new cards.
We hope you find this post helpful, if you have any questions or comments let us know below.
Hat tip to this thread on FT
