I just read from DoC that the minimum Amazon gift card reloads have increased from $1 to $5. Less than one year ago the minimum was only 50 cents. This is annoying.
However the more I think about it, is it really too much of a problem?
Assuming one regularly purchases items from Amazon. Say one needs to have 15 debit transactions for a $300 checking sign up bonus. If one purchases 15 five dollar Amazon Gift Cards, that is $75. The typical opportunity cost on that $75 is probably around 1-7% depending on which credit card one typically uses for Amazon purchases. Let’s assume the opportunity cost is 6%. 6% of $75 is $4.50. Is $4.50 too much to pay to get a $300 sign up bonus? 4.50/300 = 1.5%. So you get 98.5% of your sign up bonus still.
Some alternatives to Amazon. I’ve seen some people say to pump small increments of gas over and over into your tank at the gas station triggering multiple tiny transactions on the debit card.
Another option I’ve seen is to use Cash App debit transfers of small amounts.
A gentleman in the Profitable Content discord was asking about using Pepper to buy $1 Amazon eGift cards and redeem them immediately into Amazon, getting 5% cashback in the process. I tried this yesterday with Pepper for a single $1 Amazon eGift card and was successful. Additionally, since Pepper allows one to enter arbitrary dollar amounts it might perhaps be a good way to zero out VISA/Mastercard gift cards with tiny remaining balances.
Bonus hunters are a clever bunch and I have no doubt there will soon be discussions of many other reasonable options to meet the required number of debit swipes per month.
Afterthoughts
Chuck at DoC just started an article for people to share their tips for meeting small $1 spend transactions, as an alternative to Amazon. There are some great ideas in this article. I was tempted to share the Pepper ideas above there in his article in the comments section, but figured it’d be better if less knew about it.