Every time I buy a high denomination reload card with credit, I am asked for identification. There was one store that I frequented where I was allowed to buy using a debit card. That is no longer the case.
Last week, I bought the prepaid card with debit, I tried last night to no avail. I believe it is likely because of incidents like this one from the New York Times In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in A.T.M. Scheme.
With the Visa/Mastercard with PIN, I had been using my discounted prepaid cards to buy reloadable cards. It is now more difficult to buy any prepaid card with credit due to increased fraudulent activity. I must now go back to the drawing board and find a solution to emptying the Visa gift cards.
Stories like that draw so much media attention but the sad part is, none of the initial activity had to do with using credit/debit cards to buy prepaid/gift cards. They were simply drawing cash from ATM. If anything, using large quantity of cash to pay for prepaid/gift cards should be a red flag whereas using a credit/debit is arguably safer for a merchant since there is a trail/record.
Yep.. it’s definitely made my job of chasing the points more difficult. Another store even asked to see ID for a gift card when I said I wanted to use debit.