Cashback on Gift Cards?

WillPS

Airtime Rewards offers a flat 4% discount on many retails, including some the employee benefit schemes seem to miss - Starbucks to name one. 

Their rate for Asda and Uber is 4%, whereas perksatwork offer only 3% for these merchants - so it's a go-to for me for those two as well as Starbucks. 

Another advantage is that it's very quick and easy to get a voucher purchased from your phone on-the-go. I tend to use 'scan-as-you-shop' when I do a big shop, then once I know my total I'll generate a voucher for (close to) the correct amount before paying. This is a bit of a PITA with perksatwork because it involves several steps and a 3Dsecure check every time, whereas Airtime Rewards' flow is 4 steps then 'here's your voucher'.

A previous employer gave me access to Sodexo's version of the same thing. It was more generous (I think normally 1% more than perksatwork) but was absolutely hideous to use. Card numbers had to be entered in full each time and it was one of those awkward checkout flows where password managers can't quite seem to handle it. 

pochisoldi

WillPS said:

pochisoldi said:

I've just spotted this one when trawling MS Money for spending pattern information - When Nationwide had a 5% cashback on supermarket spend promotion, I did a "goods+gift card" transaction at a checkout and a "gift card only" transaction at the kiosk at Sainsburys. The goods+gift card got cashback, the gift card only transaction didn't.

Suspect there's some other reason you didn't get cashback. Had you maxed out the benefit? Do you have any way of seeing the MCC used?

It'd be the first I've heard of a supermarket processing gift cards under a separate MCC if that's what it is.

Offer was not maxed out - was in the first month of the promotion and I only cottoned on towards the end of the month, the only differences between cashback paid and cashback not paid was where the till was located, and the nature of the transaction.
Nationwide does not show the MCC or description.