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Maximizing Amazon Payments
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Amazon Payments is well loved around these parts. It’s great for meeting minimum spend, manufacturing free points, and using up your unwanted rebate cards. But, which of these methods is the most valuable? You only can send and receive $1,000 a month, so it’s important to make the most of it.
Amazon Payment Valuations
For this post, let’s assume you only have two AP accounts, which means you can send and receive $1,000. Regardless of what you choose to use on AP, your cost per point will be $0.00. However, what is the best way to use that $2,000 a month? What way will get you the most points? Let’s see…
| Card | Profit | Sign-Up Bonus | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1X Card | 2,000 Pts | 0 | $20.00 |
| 2X Card | 4,000 Pts | 0 | $40.00 |
| Gift Cards w/ PIN | 0 | 0 | $0.00 |
| Rebate Cards | $19.80 | 0 | $19.80 |
| Discover Card | $20 | $50 | $70.00 |
| Sign-Up Bonus One | 2,000 Pts | 30,000 Pts | $320.00 |
| Sign-Up Bonus Two | 2,000 Pts | 20,000 Pts | $220.00 |
Breaking Down the Table
- The columns are as follows: Card, Profit, SIgn-Up Bonus, Total.
- Card: The card used.
- Profit: Points/Cash Back gained from using AP.
- Sign-Up Bonus: The sign-up bonus you would receive based on this spend – see below for specifics.
- Total: The total profit gained by adding the profit and sign-up bonus together. In this example, 1 point = $0.01 for convenience.
- 1X Card: Any 1X Card – Sapphire Preferred, Barclaycard US Airways, ect.
- 2X Card: Any 2X Card – Barclaycard Arrival, Capital One Venture, ect.
- Gift Cards w/ PIN: MC and Visa gift cards. There is no profit or sign-up bonus for these cards, because you can easily liquidate them with Bluebird or Serve. There’s no benefit for using them on AP.
- Rebate Cards: Gift cards without a PIN. The profit is the price you didn’t have to pay for a gift card with a fee ($4.95 * 4).
- Discover Card: Discover commonly has targeted offers they send to card members where you can get a cash back bonus by hitting a certain spending requirement. The one I used for this table, is one I am working on now – Spend $1,500 each month for 5 months and get $250 cash back. For the sake of the table, I divided $250 by 5, which equals a $50 bonus per month.
- Sign-Up Bonus One: This bonus is 30,000 points after spending $1,000.
- Sign-Up Bonus Two: This bonus is 50,000 points after spending $5,000. So, just like the Discover Card, I divided 50,000 by $5,000 which equals 10,000 points per $5,000 (10,000 * 2 = 20,000).
Best Card to Use
Based on the table, you can see the best card to use is: any card that has a sign-up bonus. That’s a good rule of thumb, however, if I had a card that earned 5X at a store selling gift cards (Ink Bold), I would do the minimum spend requirements solely buying gift cards and loading them to Bluebird/Serve. That you maximize your rewards. If your card only earns 1X points or 1% cash back, I would stick with AP.
That’s my two cents. What card do you prefer to use with Amazon Payments?
