Back in the day, buying American Express gift cards was a great way to manufacture spending and meet minimum spending requirements on credit cards. The cashback companies (BeFrugal, TopCashback, etc) would often have payouts of 2% or even higher on American Express gift cards.
(SEE ALSO: Last day for up to $30 from BeFrugal.com and Amex cards with 2.25% cashback at TopCashback) – NOTE: THIS DEAL IS EXPIRED BUT LINKED FOR REFERENCE
And even though they would charge a purchase fee (usually $3.95) for each card, as well as a shipping fee ($8.95, but you could get it waived by purchasing a bulk shipper program), you could still make money, and finance the cost of your liquidation methods (usually buying Visa / Mastercard gift cards for an additional fee)
100% off purchase fees on Amex Gift Cards
That gravy train ended a few months ago, when all of the portal companies capped the gift cards to purchases of $200 or less. I’m actually not clear if you would get cashback on multiple purchases of $200 gift cards in the same transaction, or not. Also, I believe that you might not earn portal cash back if you use a coupon code (at least most portal’s have that exclusion in their terms).
In any case, American Express is offering 100% off purchase fees from now until the end of the year with coupon code NOVCCT1.
There is still a shipping fee, which is $8.95 last I looked.
Note that there is also an #AmexOffer on buying American Express gift cards, which would turn this into a slight moneymaker. I believe it is not targeted – at least I had it on all of my cards.
Another note is that American Express gift cards can NOT be used to load Bluebird or Serve – you’d need to either buy actual product, or buy Visa / Mastercard gift cards to then liquidate. Still, it may be doing once per Amex card that you have the offer on.
Happy spending!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at
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