Simon Mall sells Visa gift cards in the Mall and online. There have been some changes over time in their online gift card sales.
They also offer bulk gift card sales for businesses who want to reward their employees. It’s technically possible to buy a bunch of $1000 Visa gift cards online  for around $1001 each. Or, more practically, for $1003.95 each.
This bulk gift card option could be especially useful for someone who has a very high spend threshold on a credit card, or possibly to liquidate high-dollar Amex gift cards.
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Simon Gift Cards In-Store
We’ve discussed previously that physical Simon Mall locations sell $500 Visa gift cards for a small fee of $2 or $2.95. [UPDATE 12/30/2014: They now charge $3.95.] This option is still a good option for those who have well-stocked Simon Malls nearby. And you may have a Simon Mall nearby even if you don’t realize it! I found out that there are three Mall locations nearby which I hadn’t realized were part of Simon.
The Simon fee is less than the typical $5-$7 we pay in grocery stores and drugstores for gift cards. But try calling first to see if they have Visa gift cards in stock.
Of course the best is to buy gift cards at places where you have a category bonus, but sometimes we want to rack up regular spend in order to meet a minimum spend requirement or to rack up certain valuable points.
Some mention that it’s possible to get business gift cards in denominations of $1000 at Simon Mall; presumably these have the same activation fee of $2-$2.95. It’s unclear how many locations carry these business gift cards and whether they’ll let anyone claim to be a business and purchase the gift cards.
Simon gift cards are issued either by Metabank or US Bank, and they’re known to work as debit cards with a PIN and can be unloaded at Walmart via Bluebird/Serve/money-order.
Simon Gift Cards Online
Another possibility is to order Simon Mall gift cards online. When placing a regular (non-bulk) order online they limit you to one $500 gift card per order, which ends up costing $506.94 after including all fees.
It’s actually not processed by Simon themselves; the Simon website redirects you and it gets processed through Giftcardmall.com. (The Amex gift cards are processed by Simon themselves, but the Visa gift cards that we’re interested in are farmed out to GiftCardMall.)
Interestingly, the cost of  $506.94 is one dollar less than the cost of a single gift card purchased directly from giftcardmall.com; they charge $507.94 after all fees. That being said, most people would prefer ordering on giftcardmall.com directly since they don’t limit you to $500 per order.
Additionally, when ordering more than one gift card from giftcardmall.com directly, the cost per gift card decreases slightly. For example, if you order four $500 gift cards, the cost will be $28.86, or $7.22 per gift card.
One other thing to consider is the portal points. GiftCardMall offers portal points for most gift cards. Going through the Simon website will likely make it impossible to earn these points. Note: This may no longer make a difference since GiftCardMall stopped paying out on Visa gift cards and a few other gift cards. But if you find a portal which still pays out for Visa gift cards, then this could be a factor.
Simon Gift Cards In-Bulk
Another option available is to order Simon Gift Cards online in-bulk. You need to register in order to be able to buy in bulk, and technically you’re supposed to be a business in order to register to buy in bulk.
They make the registration really official and even ask you for your TIN. I tried entering my SSN as my TIN (I don’t have a EIN) and it didn’t work for some reason. Others mention getting denied even when using a real EIN, but you may have better luck calling up and registering with a human. I haven’t tried too hard since I’m not planning on making a bulk order right now.
Anyway, once you get through the registration, you can then purchase gift cards in denominations of up to $1000. This is in contrast to gift cards bought in the physical mall which typically are a max of $500 (see above). Is this the rebirth of the $1,000 gift card?
And you can pay with a credit card – Visa, MC, or Amex – as mentioned in the FAQ.
Bulk Fees
The purchase fee for bulk orders online is $1-$2.95 per gift card. Here’s the fee chart (comes up during registration):
As you can see, if you order 1000 gift cards it would be just $1 each. Of course if you order 1000 gift cards of $1000 each that means you’re ordering a million dollars worth of gift cards. Still, it’s interesting to think about the possibilities – and maybe we have some readers who are high-rollers!
There’s also a processing fee of $10-$30 for the order. Here’s a snippet from the FAQ:
If we’ll go back to our million dollar customer, we see that he can order 1000 gift cards of $1000 each for a cost of $1001.03 each. And he can put that million dollar charge on his credit card! (Amex has a car purchase program in which you can buy a car with your Amex card, but a million dollars still seems like a lot!  What’s the  highest charge you’ve ever put on your credit card?)
There is a mention in the FAQ about an additional shipping charge, but as far as I can see that’s only for expedited shipping; meaning that standard shipping is free. Since I was unable to complete registration, I haven’t been able to verify this positively.
Practical Applications
Most of us won’t be making $1,000,000 orders, but let’s try calculating some more likely scenarios. It’s clear in the FAQÂ and in the above charts that there’s no minimum order size – you can purchase even one single gift card.
— Say someone needed to meet a $10,000 spend threshold, and he ordered ten $1,000 gift cards. His total cost would be $3.95 per gift card ($2.95 purchase fee, plus $10 processing fee divided between the ten cards).
He has the advantage of:
- paying less than the standard cost of buying gift cards
- convenience of being able to order online (have fun trying to convince a cashier to sell you $10,000 in one shot!)
- gift card denominations of $1000 – less work to unload
- having his name embossed on the card for no additional fee (?)
— Now let’s take a smaller figure and say someone wants to rack up $5,000 in spend. If he orders five $1,000 gift cards, his cost would be $4.95 per gift card ($2.95 purchase fee, plus $10 processing fee divided between five cards). He still comes out ahead in terms of cost and convenience.
Liquidate Amex Gift Cards
But let’s go even smaller. Say someone has a monthly need of liquidating a $3,000 Amex gift card. If he orders three $1,000 Simon Visa gift cards, his cost would be $18.85, or $6.28 per gift card. He’s still ahead of the game.
And to liquidate a $2,000 Amex gift card, the cost would be $15.90, or $7.95 per gift card. This is still less than the benchmark $5 per $500 gift card, and it’s almost half the $28.86 that GCM would charge you for $2,000 in gift cards. And it’s ordered online without having to deal with pesky cashiers (they sometimes won’t allow an Amex gift card to pay for a Visa gift card).
This is especially worth thinking about in light of the fact that GiftCardMall stopped accepting Amex gift cards as payment; many people used to use that as a way of liquidating Amex gift cards. This could be a possible alternative to consider. Presumably, if the Amex gift card is registered properly, it would work at Simon online. (You’d have to make the order for slightly less than $3000/$2000, so that the Amex gift card would cover the cost of the $15.90/$18.85 fees.)
Our Verdict
Bottom line: is this really worthwhile?
First off, I haven’t tried this yet, so there’s bound to be some roadblocks/points that I haven’t mentioned. But from what I can see the main difficulty here is registering for a Simon bulk buyer account. As mentioned, this is really meant for businesses, and they may not fall so easily for fake businesses. If someone has a real business that he can register, then he may be able to register fairly easily.
I don’t see this as useful for someone who wants to make a single few thousand dollar order. Though it may be cheaper than ordering through GCM, there’s bound to be some hassle with the registration process.
I see this more for someone who has high-dollar gift card purchases to make, and particularly for someone who has high-dollar Amex gift cards to liquidate on a constant basis. For him, it could be worth the effort to register with Simon and have a better alternative to GCM.
