Purchasing Gift Cards with a Credit Card

Lonster

Hello
I checked my credit card statement and discovered a 'Cash Fee' for a transaction when I used my Credit Card to purchase a Gift Card. It would appear that my Mastercard (issued by NatWest) now applies this additional fee when purchasing any type of Gift Card.

The fee of £0.30 was applied when purchasing a Starbucks £10.00 Gift Card online. Mastercard is now treating such purchases as a Cash Advance so please take note.

As I regularly purchase Gift Cards (for prizes, incentives) on behalf of my work and have been doing so for quite some time the fee has comes as a bit of a surprise.

dazza.mk

More like purchases from that retailer have been coded coded as a cash advance, if you were to buy a gif card from a physical store they wouldn't know whether it was a gift card or a general purchase.

Anthorn

Lonster wrote: »

Hello
I checked my credit card statement and discovered a 'Cash Fee' for a transaction when I used my Credit Card to purchase a Gift Card. It would appear that my Mastercard (issued by NatWest) now applies this additional fee when purchasing any type of Gift Card.

The fee of £0.30 was applied when purchasing a Starbucks £10.00 Gift Card online. Mastercard is now treating such purchases as a Cash Advance so please take note.

As I regularly purchase Gift Cards (for prizes, incentives) on behalf of my work and have been doing so for quite some time the fee has comes as a bit of a surprise.

Have a look at the name of the retailer which appears on your statement. I would guess that it's not "Starbucks" but "SVM Global" or "SVM Cards" which provides the gift cards on behalf of Starbucks. SVM will be well known to most card issuers as a retailer of gift cards.

A possible way out of the cash fee is to buy the card in-store and not online. For example when I buy a Primark gift card in-store "Primark" is the name of the retailer on my statement. But if I buy a Primark gift card online "Voucher Express" is the retailer on my statement.