I had the opportunity to try out a Visa prepaid card that I picked up from my local A&P when I took advantage of two posts, Run, Do Not Walk To Your Closest A&P Supermarket and Discounted Staples Gift Cards.
I went through my Paypal account and added a new credit card and entered all of my Visa prepaid card information with success when I purchased my Staples gift card on eBay from Gift Card Mall
I did not test this out because I would have incurred a nearly 3% fee if I sent money to a person. If I sent it to a business that my friend operates, they would have been assessed the fee.
Bottom Line:
This opportunity to pay with prepaid cards on Paypal provides us to earn bonus miles in non bonus categories where you buy the prepaid cards with a high bonus earning card then fund with Paypal. If you gift card churn over eBay you could earn eBay Bucks and double dip.
This is a great avenue for to review because paying with Paypal can free up access to Amazon Payments when using American Express gift cards because there is no PIN. The big caveat is, what does Paypal think with the constant churn of cards? How many is too many before a shutdown?
You are essentially using the Visa/MC/Amex gift cards like a regular credit card. You can do that anywhere for online or offline shopping. How is using paypal any better than lets say using the Gift card directly on costco.com? There is no manufactured spending to liquidate the gift card.
Correct, I am using that as a regular credit card. Oftentimes in my experience, prepaid cards can’t be used online without some sort of registration or address verification. The only system that I know of that had allowed this for free is Amazon Payments. Paypal now allows you to link a prepaid card without address verification. They will still charge you a fee for sending money to a person, but now you can at least buy things with the prepaid card online.
Using purchased VISA/MC/AMEX GCs don’t earn anything…unless there is no other choice, this will be the last route I will use. Plus, if I need to dispute something, I rather want to dispute with a credit card company rather than a PrePaid gift card company…and if I’m buying an expensive stuffs, I rather want to have a credit card company’s purchase protection than a PrePaid gift card company’s protection if there is any.
You’re absolutely right, you’d be at the mercy of the prepaid gift card company if a dispute is necessary and without warranty protection.
My plans for using prepaid cards on Paypal: the well for 2x UR points for Paypal my cash cards dry up. Then I would go to the supermarket and buy $500 prepaid cards to use on Paypal for things that do not need a warranty/returns.
I also don’t plan on hitting Paypal as hard as I do with Amazon Payments