I have been buying money orders at Walmart with gift cards for a while now to earn free miles from my US Airways card, but I have been looking for a closer alternative because the Walmart is a little out of the way for me. I just recently found that you can also buy money orders at Kroger grocery stores! This means that I have another place to take my Simon Mall Gift cards, and the gift cards from offers like the $15 free from Bank of America and Kmart offer and $20 free and 2000 miles from Staples offer that I wrote about this week. This is a key part of my plan on How to Spend Money without Spending Money for almost Free Miles!
How to do it
Start out at the Guest Care and Money Services Desk.
My location was selling them for only $0.69!
Tell the cashier you need a $1000 money order (or whatever amount) and they will ring up the total. You can do multiple money orders at one time but if you get $3,000 or more they have to fill out a form with your ID.
Tell them you are paying by debit card and tell them you want to split the transaction and put $500 on your debit card (or whatever amount your gift cards are for). Remember that you need to have set the PIN for the gift cards before you use them! Then swipe your card on the credit card terminal that looks like this.
Confirm the amount on the screen.
Then enter your PIN.
Repeat this as many times as necessary until you have a zero balance. I typically use up all of my gift cards completely and then pay cash for the balance (which is just the money order fees)
And you are done! You can then take this money order and deposit it in your bank account.
Conclusion
Since there are a bunch of Kroger stores in Nashville where I am currently visiting, having another option besides Walmart to buy money orders and liquidate gift cards is great. Do you know any other locations where you can use gift cards with a PIN to buy money orders?
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