Cheeky way to get spending bonus

matttaylor

I'm not a credit person, I've always avoided it but I saw MSE were recommending an AMEX the other day as they were offering £100 Amazon voucher if you spent £3,000 on it in the first six months.

I've got some expensive home improvements lined up so I thought why not. Anyway I was wondering if I wanted to make sure I hit the £3,000 would it be possible to transfer a load of cash into my PayPal account using my AMEX card? Would that be counted as a spend?

Thanks, Matt

Sandtree

Are you sure you can add money to your PayPal account using a credit card? Their help pages suggest its only from a bank account via DD.

You can certainly have two PayPal accounts and pay yourself from one to the other using a credit card and it counts as a purchase but you then have to pay the PayPal credit card fee so need to make sure you're not eroding all your bonus in PayPal fees to secure it!

D3xt3r5L4b

matttaylor said:

I'm not a credit person, I've always avoided it but I saw MSE were recommending an AMEX the other day as they were offering £100 Amazon voucher if you spent £3,000 on it in the first six months.

I've got some expensive home improvements lined up so I thought why not. Anyway I was wondering if I wanted to make sure I hit the £3,000 would it be possible to transfer a load of cash into my PayPal account using my AMEX card? Would that be counted as a spend?

Thanks, Matt

No that won’t work.
And it’s not a £100 Amazon voucher - you accrue membership points with Amex that you out towards things like Avios, hotel points etc.

The conversion rate to an Amazon voucher works out very poorly as well.

WillPS

There are cheeky ways of creating spend, but this isn't one of them.

adamp87

Be careful about doing things to cheat the system too - they’ve recently in America began clawing back points from customers buying things like giftcards & such to trick the system.

Sandtree

adamp87 said:

Be careful about doing things to cheat the system too - they’ve recently in America began clawing back points from customers buying things like giftcards & such to trick the system.

In the US card issuers can get exceptionally detailed information on what you are buying in the transaction and I understand effectively the more the retailer shares the lower the fees they are typically charged (data has value after all). Any ideas if the same level of detail is given in the UK? I originally understood that there was just a general SIC code associated with a merchant ID so the card issuer will know if its a supermarket or a hotel but not much else whereas US side they'd know how many items you bought, how many/much was alcohol, lottery tickets etc all from a single transaction.

Sad_Dad

There are cheeky ways of doing this with Paypal and AMEX to earn cashback. I got away with transferring a lot of money but Paypal have locked my account. I cannot get in touch with them to get it unlocked and I have a balance that I cannot spend or transfer. AMEX have also reduced my credit limit from £15,000 to £700. 

The_Urbanite

The bottom line is yes, you can use Paypal send to family & friends to generate spend on Amex and it won't generate any fees.

However, both Amex and Paypal hate people doing it at noticable volumes and will quickly stop you doing it.

matttaylor

Sandtree said:

Are you sure you can add money to your PayPal account using a credit card? Their help pages suggest its only from a bank account via DD.

You can certainly have two PayPal accounts and pay yourself from one to the other using a credit card and it counts as a purchase but you then have to pay the PayPal credit card fee so need to make sure you're not eroding all your bonus in PayPal fees to secure it!

Ah you are right, I cannot fund PayPal with it. DOH! Thanks.

The_Urbanite

There is a name for doing this sort of thing - manufactured spending.

Best way is to research this on Google then pick a method that works for you. People won't be massively keen on posting step-by-step instructions.