Dying Deals and Updates: Amazon, Amex, Paypal
Here’s a quick update on some opportunities to collect miles or extra perks. Mostly deals dying, which is always sad, but a little bit of good news at the end.
No More Amazon Payments
Amazon Payments has sent out emails indicating that it will no longer allow person to person payments beginning October 13, 2014. It used to have a payment processing option where you could send up to $1000 a month fee free from a credit card. People used to use this method to help meet minimum spending requirements on credit card sign-up bonuses or earn an extra 1000 miles every month by sending a payment to a friend. This isn’t something I personally did, but I am still sad to see it go on everyone else’s behalf.
Amex Gift Cards at Shopping Portals Dead (or Pause)
For the time being, Amex gift cards have been removed from shopping portals offering bonuses for these purchases. Portals like TopCashBack and Barclaycard RewardsBoost used to at times offer 3% cash back or 4 extra points per dollar so this was a good way to earn some extra cash back for a purchase that wasn’t eligible for any credit card bonuses. Although the portals have announced the removal to be temporary, I am just assuming that this is not coming back and, if it does, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Keep in mind that Amex gift cards are different from Visa or MasterCard gift cards in that you cannot set a PIN on these and use them as a debit card so their only purpose was to use them to buy things where you cannot get an equivalent credit card category bonus otherwise.
Paypal $4000 Limit Resets at Start of Month
And finally for some positive news…
Paypal MyCash cards have a $4000 a month limit to load a Paypal account. Previously, this limit used to reset on a 31 day rolling basis, which used to make it very difficult to keep track of for some. Amol tweeted me last month that Paypal is now resetting the $4000 reload limit at the start of the month, making it far far easier to know exactly when you will have the $4000 available again. Although it does not change limits, this is a very positive change, in my opinion. Before getting involved with Paypal, do read my warnings about risks with Paypal and account safety: How To Use Your Paypal Account (More) Safely.
Thank you for this! Very helpful to know about Amazon Payments specifically.
Thank you for reading, Alex! Glad it was useful :)
Now that AP is dying, besides Kiva, are there other good ways to liquidate the amex cards?
The only way I know would be to buy other cards with them, if you can, and liquidate those. It is troublesome, though, especially without the shopping portal bonus.
Thanks a lot for this update. I was traveling so I am behind on the news and I had not heard anything about AP changes. Yes, sad to see that go since I did utilize it. Maybe time to try Paypal…. It was great to see you at the NY MeetUp and I look forward to seeing you again in Phoenix @WestCoastDo! Cheers!
Very nice to see you too! And looking forward to WestCoastDO in November as well :)
Besides AMEX stopping payouts to the portals, Gift Card Mall and Simon Mall (personal and corporate) stopped allowing AMEX as payment for Visa GC a couple weeks ago. All of this, the portals, the malls disallowing use for GC purchases all happened within a few days of each other. Don’t think that was coincidence. I have a corporate SM account and got an e-mail from them stating no more AMEX GC allowed as payment. I had used an AEGC the week prior without a problem (only time I did it too). The hammer came down all at once and quickly.
I’d really like to know the “why’s” behind all of this but good luck with that.
As always, we can speculate and come up with good explanations. But unless we are present at the meetings themselves, we’ll never really know :)