The Offer
- Staples stores are selling $200 Mastercard gift cards with no activation fees from 6/14 – 6/20.
The Fine Print
- Limit 1 per customer
- In-store only
Our Verdict
Last week was Visa gift cards, this week Mastercard. Works with the AmEx offer for 10% back at Staples or use a card that earns at a high rate on office supply store purchases.
Hat tip to GC Galore
How can a lot of people use this card to buy MO or load BB? Every time I tried to buy MO, the cashier always checked my card to make sure that I use a card with my name on it.
I had the following experience while trying to load my BB with VGC at WM last week. I loaded 400 on day x, 600 on day x+1, 400 on x+2. I was trying to load more on x+2 and it just won’t go through. Cashier said that no debit money available error or something along this line. The error wasn’t clear. I even tried my bank debit card and it didn’t go through. I am assuming that there was some loading limit reached, but not very clear. BB website says 1999 limit per day (5K monthly limit). In the past people had said 1k limit per day. It seems it may be 1k limit with running 24 hours or something like that. Technically, it was diff calendar day and beyond running 24 hours between 600 loading on x+1 (1pm) and 400 loading on x+2 (4pm). I called BB and everything is fine with the account. Any thoughts? Thx
Loaded $400 today on BB and it worked fine so somehow $1k limit kicked in the other day. As I mentioned above, $1k limit is a mystery for so many reasons. 600 and 400 transactions on two diff days, more than 24 hrs apart and the limit on the BB site says $1999.99 limit per day. Doesn’t make sense, but won’t do more than $1k over 2 day period.
unless truly necessary, calling could draw eyes to the acct & get shutdown sooner
What are the reasons they usually shut down the acct for? I never withdraw cash. I use for bills that I can’t pay with credit card w/o a fee. I also buy stuff (not as often) using the card so that they make money by me using their card. I try to keep them happy. 🙂
The expiration is 6/20. (Title and text are wrong. Image is correct.)
Fixed ty
Any issues with these cards?
No, not anymore. The Mastercard gift cards at Staples switched over to Metabank about a year and a half ago (they used to be US Bank), and the fraud issues have stopped. The only annoying thing about these is that you need to use the fast-finger cancel method to liquidate at Wal Mart.
can you still not use mc to liq?
Sorry, what is fast finger cancel method?
At Wal-mart, for some reason, when you swipe Mastercard gift cards it defaults to “credit” before giving you the option to put in a PIN, and the liquidation transaction (buy Money order, load Serve etc) gets declined since you need to be using debit with a PIN for those. The workaround is to hit the “cancel” button on the screen right after you swipe, then it lets you select debit and then put in a PIN. But the cancel button is only on the screen for a second or so, so you need to be quick about it.
Max of 50$ per transaction right?
No, that’s for Vanilla-branded cards (and $49.99 is the max). These will work with no limit, if you hit cancel fast enough.
Bluebird works in default mode (credit), but for Gobank, need to switch to Debit
Someone has some research to do.
Let me help him out. We are all there at one point.
New POS systems (color terminal):
1. Swipe GC
2. Press “Change Payment” on screen (Yellow button on pad should also work, but screen works better for some. Timing is critical.)
3. Press “DEBIT”
4. Press “No Cash Back”
5. Enter PIN – Screen showing another ‘Waiting for cashier…’.
6. Ask Cashier to hit blue color Debit button on the screen
Detailed Guide Here:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manufactured-spending/1455542-pin-available-now-visa-mc-prepaid-debit-cards-2013-2016-a.html
I meant that, when loading BB at WM, you can use MCGCs in default mode (credit), no need for quick-finger-cancel method described above.
When you do the same thing with Gobank, however (loading it using MCGCs), you will have to hit cancel and select debit. PITA
I usually load BB using MCGCs for that reason
Thanks!
I haven’t had to do the fast-finger cancel with these at Walmart ever since the switch over to Metabank. Doesn’t even ask for PIN. Just automatically approves. YMMV, I guess.
I have the same experience with Bluebird, Serve, and Green Dot. It might be that some Walmart regions have newer/older (or just different) POS system software, though.
any more folks have a gobank card that can load staples MC w/o a pin # at WM?
Correction: forgot that these do NOT work to load Serve at WM, unless something has changed recently. Bluebird and Green Dot are okay.