I read something pretty disappointing this morning over at Miles to Memories regarding one of the easiest ways to generate miles and points – effective April 16, 2015, American Express will no longer accept online loads with Mastercard, Visa, or Discover cards.
No more credit card loads to the Amex Serve
Goodbye Credit Card Loads Of The Amex Serve Card
The American Express Serve card
That is a huge disappointment for me since there are not a lot of great, easy ways that I can generate spending while overseas. Loading the American Express Serve is exceptionally easy to do with amounts up to $1,000 per month in $200 increments per day. All one had to do is to put the credit card on to do either manual or automatic loads (I did it manually just out of preference). I could simply sign on to the app and click my card to load at the $200 amount every couple/few days and that was that!
Of course, it is still possible to load Serve at Wal-Mart (like Bluebird) but the removal of the simplicity of using a card to load while at your computer is sad. That is an easy 12,000 miles/points per card gone each year!
At least American Express has given fair notice of this change so everyone that uses Serve will be able to get their $1,000 in credit card loads done for both March and April. You will still be able to use American Express cards to load your account but will not receive points for the loads (with the exception of some reports like the Fidelity Amex and other Amex products from other banks). At least those loads will count towards minimum spending requirements.
Serve, Bluebird, or REDcard?
If you do not mind going to Wal-Mart to load up your cards, then Serve will still work for you. If you would rather go the better, easier way of loading the Target REDcard with a credit card at Targets, you can do that up to $5,000 per month without having to purchase gift cards first. Of course, no telling how long before the lid gets put on that method. At present, the temporary REDcards required for setting up an account are not available in all states (and that includes NY, unfortunately).
If you do have access to them and would like to load through this simple method, make sure you head over here to Frequent Miler and check out his posts on the subject. I am quite jealous of this method at this time and hope it comes to NY soon so I can have family start loading it for me (unless any friendly reader would like to send me one!:) ). Just remember that you can only have one of the family of Amex prepaid cards – Serve, Bluebird, REDcard.
It is true that most Target stores still don’t have the temporary REDcard (Redbird) cards and that you must have an activated such card to register online for the permanent one in your name; actually you just need that card’s acct nr and 4 digit security code. However, you can buy one online for a small fee; I’m one of the people who provides them and have sold it to hundreds of bloggers, if anyone is interested please email me at NoonRadar@gmail.com.
I’m not affiliated with this blog or any other major MS blog. I do however have many references (from people who got the Redbird from me) on some major MS blogs.
Also, for people who plan to switch, change the phone nr and email address on your Serve/Bluebird acct before you cancel it, if you’re going to use the same info on the REDcard registration. Once you cancel it, you can literally register for REDcard right after.
RATS! I loathe going to Wal-Mart! I don’t have a REDCard, CA residence where it’s hit or miss where they roost. I still have my AFT cards and can get $5k per month there. I also can still find a few ReLoadIts to bulk up my Serve card.