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Earning 5x Points on Everyday Spend With Visa and Amex Prepaid Cards

Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly
Founder and “The Points Guy”
Since launching TPG in 2010, founder Brian Kelly has expanded the team to include a distinguished editorial staff and an extensive network of freelancer contacts from around the globe. Today, TPG reaches 11 million unique monthly visitors and more than 3 million followers across social media platforms and has offices in New York City, Charlotte and the U.K.
Nov. 08, 2012
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2 min read
Earning 5x Points on Everyday Spend With Visa and Amex Prepaid Cards
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Update: You can no longer purchase Vanilla Reload cards using a credit card and Vanilla Reloads are no longer available in Office Depot.

There's currently a shortage of Vanilla reloadable cards on the market- many TPG readers are reporting their Office Depots are either sold out or no longer offering the card. This is causing a lot of frustration for those looking to leverage Bluebird to earn miles and points by paying everyday bills with extremely low fees and I've gotten a lot of emails asking whether there's an angle without Vanilla reloadable cards.

And the answer is YES, there are still ways to maximize your point earning at Office Depot by buying non-reloadable cards for nominal fees. You still get the 5x points for shopping at Office Depot, but you lose the flexibility to reload in larger quantities or to use Bluebird to pay any bill or make free ATM transactions. However, at the end of the day you can still convert more of your regular spend to earning 5x points, which is great.

Amex Prepaid cards are often next to the Vanilla Reload cards

One option is to buy a OneVanilla Prepaid Visa cards at $500 intervals with a $5.95 fee. Since they aren't registered to your address you may have an issue shopping online where you need to verify your address, but for simple purchases at retail stores and restaurants you should have no issues.


The angle here is that you earn 5x points when purchasing these pre-paid cards so even though you don't earn base points when using them, it doesn't matter because you've already banked the 5x points for purchasing them on the front-end. This is not a new concept- my friend and fellow blogger Frequent Miler pioneered the Prepaid/Vanilla movement and has been blogging about this technique all year- especially with his "award winning" post "One Card to Rule Them All" on May 1.