Staples Mastercard Gift Card Deal
Staples sells a variety of Visa & Mastercard gift cards. Depending on the value (up to $200) the fee to purchase these can cost as much as $6.95. They do often run rebate promos on these cards, however the rebates are limited to one per household meaning it gets hard to scale up. Well, this week they are bringing back a different offer that waives the fee completely. Let’s take a look.
The Offer
- No purchase fee when you buy a $200 Mastercard® Gift Card
Key Terms
- Valid 3/24/2019–3/30/2019.
- The Mastercard® Gift Card is issued by Metabnk, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International.
- No apparent limit
You can find the full terms in the weekly ad on page 3.
Maximizing This Deal
There’s no limits mentions in the ad, so you should be able to purchase up to $2,000 in total per day. Cards like the Chase Ink Plus, Ink Cash and Amex SimplyCash Plus will all earn 5X/5% back on these purchases. I also assume you may be able to visit multiple stores and/or ask to do multiple transactions despite the terms, but that is obviously YMMV.
WARNING
Mastercards have had a lot of fraud issues in the past so only purchase them if you have a known and immediate use for them. Letting them sit in your draw for a few weeks/months is not a good idea.
Spending the Mastercards
These Mastercards are PIN-enabled and should work anywhere Mastercard is accepted. I know people have had issues with these coding as debit cards at Walmart, but they do work at some places and can be run as credit if you are just using them to buy normal products.
For more info, see: How To Liquidate Prepaid Visa & Mastercard Gift Cards
Conclusion
It’s nice to see Staples bring back this offer, as many 5X sources have been drying up lately. Most people probably prefer Visa gift cards, but this should also be useful.
What do you think? Are you excited for this Staples Mastercard gift card deal? Let us know in the comments!
I purchased a $200 mastercard giftcard at Staples and its not showing 5x points. On another note, I went to another Staples and bought $1400 in mastercard and thats showing up as 5x point.
Wonder if they are cracking down.
I doubt – probably just a coding error or something. Glad it messed up the $1400 transaction instead of the $200 one.
Ihmmm should I call and tell them to correct it? LoL
🙂
You are now given an option to add a pin when you register the card or check your balance: Register Card
Check Balance/Transactions
Personalize PIN
Thanks Roy
Thanks. What’s the pin on these if you want to make a debit purchase? Is it the last 4 digits like the vgc? I need to pay my property taxes as a debit transaction, they only charge $1 per debit card.
I haven’t bought them in a while and can’t remember if it is the last four or if they give you the pin inside the package. Hopefully someone else can help out.
I didn’t see a pin inside the package. So to be safe I went online to update the pin. It worked fine when I unload.
How did you unload?
My question too. MCs are not easy to use for anything besides just regular purchases, in my experience. Would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
In Mark’s post , he has a link on How to Liquid vgc/mcgc.He listed the many options you can do. I did mine at Walmart using BB.
I have only been able to use vgc at Walmart, for MOs. I’ll try mc again — I have a small stash of them which I would LOVE to be rid of.
There is a cancel trick with MCGC at Walmart. If you google it you should be able to find some Flyertalk threads that have the info on what process you need to do.
Thanks Nikki
I stopped in Staples on Friday and the Mastercards in store are now Metabank and not U.S. Bank. So that should solve the problem of the security issues with the Mastercards.
I hope so!
Appreciate the warning re: fraud, although in my experience (and looking online as well) it’s the U.S. Bank, rather than MetaBank MasterCard GCs that are especially prone to fraud. I’ve had zero issues with hundreds of MetaBank GCs, although those have been Visa not MC.
It will be interesting to see if they are better protected with MetaBank vs USB. I agree with the VGC I have not seen issues on those outside of people tampering with them in store.