Meet Your Minimum Spending Requirement with Money Orders

We’ve just entered 2016, and before everyone had even fully recovered from the holiday season, another major event hit the credit card world. Early in the morning on January 8, many people who had been using Serve or Bluebird to complete minimum spending requirements received an email from AMEX saying their accounts had been frozen due to "Manufacture Activity," meaning money could only go out, not come in. As a result, using Serve/Bluebird to liquidate Visa/MasterCard gift cards purchased with a credit card was no longer workable. So what should we do? Money Order used to be one of the less popular ways to meet minimum spending requirements, because dealing with Money Orders ("MO") was relatively more troublesome. However, it has now become a more viable option instead. So how should you do it?

Step 1: Buy Visa/MasterCard Gift Cards

As before, buying gift cards branded Visa (Visa gift cards) or Mastercard (Mastercard gift cards) is still always the first step. You can still go to your favorite Simon Mall, Giftcardmall, Staples, drugstores, grocery stores, or anywhere else to buy VGC/MCGC that let you set a PIN. Being able to set a PIN is extremely important, because if you can’t set a PIN, the card can only be used as a signature transaction (Credit), just like a credit card, and then you won’t be able to cash it out.

Step 2: Use VGC/MCGC to Buy Money Orders

There are many places that sell MO, such as grocery stores, convenience stores, and the post office (USPS). Walmart Money Center and Kroger-family grocery stores also sell them. But keep in mind that each grocery chain has its own restrictions. Some have maximum amounts, some have minimum amounts, and some only accept cash to purchase MO. Also, MO fees vary by location; generally speaking, the fee per MO is around $1. You’ll need to spend a little time figuring out which stores near you can be used to buy MO, and then test whether you can use the VGC/MCGC you bought in the previous step to purchase MO. If it works, congratulations—you’ve found a good place to buy MO. Note that the number of MO you buy at one time should not be too large, or it could easily trigger the store to file a SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) with the IRS. The threshold varies by store (some are $3,000), and clerks may also require a SAR if they are suspicious for other reasons, so try to avoid doing anything that looks suspicious, such as repeatedly buying from the same clerk in a short period of time or always buying right up against the SAR trigger amount.

Step 3: Use the Money Orders

Once you have the MO you bought, things become much easier. That’s because there are relatively few restrictions on how MO can be used. You can choose to:

• Use them to pay various bills, such as rent or tuition.
• Deposit them into your own bank account.

Note that depositing a very small amount of MO once in a while (a few hundred dollars) usually won’t be a problem. But if you do it regularly, or if you deposit large amounts of MO, it can very easily attract the bank’s suspicion, because MO are also often used by criminals for money laundering. Therefore, we recommend using MO for rent payments whenever possible, and only depositing any leftover MO into the bank if you truly can’t use them up otherwise. Also, try to avoid Chase. After going through this cycle, you’ve completed one loop and turned your credit card spending back into cash. Overall, compared with loading Bluebird, the time cost of buying MO is not that much higher. The additional cost is also not very significant, so it is still a pretty good way to complete minimum spending requirements. Do you have experience buying MO? Come share with everyone.