The last easy manufactured spending tool is coming to an end: Amazon Payments will be shutting down on October 13, 2014. If you’ve been using the fee-free service for manufactured spending or to meet credit card spending requirements, that will no longer be an option next month.
For years, people have been using Amazon Payments to generate miles and points free of charge. How? By sending $1,000 per month to family members, using mile-earning credit cards. It was also an easy way to unload American Express gift cards purchased at a profit via cash back portals.
I’ve been steering clear of Amazon Payments until recently. Being a bit overly cautious about getting shut down for this widespread activity. It seems Amazon has beaten us all to the punch. Rather than shutting accounts down, the service will be discontinued altogether.
The good news is now you can really go at this without worrying about attracting attention. Granted, the limit is still $1,000 per month and you only have two months left to take advantage of it. With my combined four family accounts, I can knock out an easy $4,000 from the $82,000 manufactured spending challenge I took up in July. That has been moving at snail’s pace thanks to me slacking off and opting to binge watch Revenge rather than fulfill my travel hacking duties. In any case, it’s nice that Amazon is at least giving us a heads up.
There are other payment services like Google Wallet and Venmo, but they tack on 3% transaction fees. That makes manufactured spending with them less than ideal. Plus, now that shopping portals have pulled Amex gift cards, the 3% fee is no longer off-set by the cash back previously earned from the portals.
If you’re holding onto gift cards after the Amazon Payment shut down, you can unload them via American Express for Target or Google Wallet, if you get absolutely desperate.
Maybe it’s the drama-filled episodes of Revenge I’ve been watching nonstop, but Amazon Payments shutting down isn’t that shocking to me. All of these mile-earning cash cows eventually come to an end. This one lasted way longer than I had expected it to.
What are your thoughts on Amazon Payments shutting down?
Yup. It’s all over the web… what a bummer. It was such an easy MS tool and I could crank out a bunch of points in under 2 minutes every single month. Now I have to up the ante at WM… Ugh…I hate going to that place!! At least I can still buy PayPal with a cc… but that too will come to an end one day… I have to figure out how Verizon’s Softcard works (formerly known as IS*S Wallet) and if that will take AP’s place.
I haven’t used Amazon payments, but another MS bump in the road cropped up for me today. I was at Walmart, planning to load $2500 worth of Visa gift cards to my Bluebird. The Walmart kiosk said that it only allows $1,000 on Bluebird per day now. A week ago I was loading $2500 on this same kiosk without any problems at all. Don’t know if this is just my Walmart, or if they are all going to go back to the very limited loading, but it is annoying.
My Walmart has only let you load $1,000 per day this entire time. =(
The way everyone brags about their “exploits”, day in and day out, on the backs of these companies and banks (gift cards, blue birds, amazon payments, money order etc.), all these eventually will shut down and the new ones will hardly replace them..
@ Ariana and after you see Revenge watch Damages 🙂
I’ve heard good things about that show. I will definitely check it out!
Haha, make sure you leave yourself a lot of time because you won’t want to stop. I love to download TV series so when on a long flight alone or with my with (dual headphone jack) we can watch shows together. 😉