Now that I can buy money orders with gift cards at Walmart, I wanted to find the cheapest spots to buy Visa gift cards. What I have found with help from Flyertalk is Simon Malls!
Your local Simon Mall has a kiosk that sells Visa gift cards with an up to $500 balance with a $2.95 fee. Go to www.simon.com to find the closest mall to you but call to confirm they sell the Visa gift cards before you make the trip. The kiosk looks like this:They will also probably have another rack of gift cards that looks like this:The cards that you want are the blue and white visa gift cards that they sell behind the counter. You can get them in denominations up to $500 and there is a $2.95 fee. You should always get the $500 ones so you decrease the % cost of the fee you pay.
Once you have the card, if you want to use it to buy money orders at Walmart or load your Bluebird account using the kiosk, you will need to set the PIN code.
To set the PIN code, you call the number on the back of the card which is currently 1-866-300-9401. Once you get the process down it can be quite quick and you don’t have to wait for the whole prompt to play before entering the next option.
- Hit 1 for English
- Enter the 16 digit account number
- Enter the 3 digit CVV security code from the back of the card followed by the # key
- Enter 7 to hear the PIN code
- Hit 2 to choose your own PIN code
- Enter a 4 digit PIN code you want to use
- Listen to the PIN then press 1 if it is correct
At this point you have a gift card with a PIN set that can be used for any debit transactions (but not for cash back or ATM usage). This works perfectly for Bluebird loads or getting money orders.
I have found that if I buy more than $1000 worth in a day, they have to fill out a form and have to have a higher up verify that the credit card matches your ID. Since I typically buy $3000 at a time (since $3000 is the most you can buy in money orders at a single Walmart per day), they fill this form out often. If they ask what you are doing with the gift cards you can just say you are using them for gifts or you could just say you are doing it to get frequent flyer miles.
Advanced Variation:
For those who really want to maximize your miles, what I like to do is combine one of these $500 gift cards I buy with my US Airways card with three $200 gift cards I buy from OfficeMax or Staples using my Chase Ink Bold card. I then get money orders at Walmart by paying the $0.70 money order fee in cash, then using a $500 gift card in full, two $200 gift cards in full, and use $100 of the last $200 gift card. Then I do the same thing again, but this time use the remaining $100 for the last $100. Doing it this way, I earn 500 US Airways miles plus 2500 Ultimate Reward points for each $1000 money order. Since I typically do $3000 per day, that means I can earn 1500 US Airways Miles and 7500 UR points every day if I didn’t mind running around a little. I probably wouldn’t recommend doing the same cards every day, but if you buy using different cards and different Simon malls then it will be less likely to attract unwanted attention. We aren’t doing anything illegal but a small number of people buying gift cards do so with stolen credit cards so when you buy a lot, everyone involved is very careful.
I know this is a lot of information but feel free to comment with any questions and follow me on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
