New Vanilla Reload Opportunities

In the comments to one of last week's posts, reader A wrote:​

I've been buying Paypal reloads at 7-11 with a CC. Now that 7-11 carries Vanilla Reloads I'll be running tests to see if the purchases code correctly for 2x.

Having seen 7-11 on the list of "Reload Locations" on the Vanilla Reload Network site, I naturally checked my local stores about 6 months ago. Since they weren't carrying them, and I had easy access at CVS, I didn't think about it any more. However, the opportunity for double points at gas stations drove me back to my local 7-11, where sure enough, both Vanilla Reload Network reload cards and PayPal Cash cards were for sale by credit card.

Now, I haven't seen a 7-11 location with actual gas pumps​ in a long time. However, Visa has a publicly available database of the "merchant codes" used by every merchant in the country. It's these codes that determine how a purchase transaction is coded by credit card companies for the purpose of awarding bonus points.

​And sure enough, my local 7-11 store locations are entered into that database as:

GAS STATIONS/FUEL/SUPPLIES-5541

This means that credit cards which bonus gas station purchases will almost certainly award bonus points for Vanilla Reload purchases at these locations, at least for Visa cards, which use Visa's supplier code database. 

My credit card statement hasn't closed yet, so I ​cannot guarantee bonus points will be awarded. ​However, I'm very confident that they will, since I used a Visa card, which means a new front has been opened in the use of the Perpetual Points Machine I outlined here.

​I'll discuss the implications of this discovery in the coming days. For now, a good place to start is Frequent Miler's chart of credit cards which bonus gas station spending. That chart is somewhat out of date, but still useful for getting a general picture of credit cards which will make this development such a lucrative opportunity.