Reflections on PayPal and My Cash warnings

PayPal's compliance department is sending warning e-mails

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of PayPal My Cash cards as a tool for manufacturing spend in two of my favorite bonus categories: drug stores and gas stations. Unlike some more aggressive users, I've never withdrawn My Cash funds directly to a bank account, preferring to use the money to fund Bluebird, buy money orders, and make bill payments.

On October 9, the first report I'm aware of appeared, describing a warning e-mail sent from PayPal's compliance department about withdrawing My Cash funds directly to a bank account. On October 17 a reader forwarded me the e-mail he received, and on the 18th I received an identical e-mail for each of my PayPal accounts.

In other words, this is not a warning e-mail narrowly targeted at those who deposit and immediately withdraw PayPal My Cash funds. Rather, the compliance department seems to have adopted a relatively broad filter to identify users who may or may not have have exhibited the behavior described in the compliance e-mail.

Does this require action?

The compliance e-mail concludes with the following:

"If you think we've made an error, here's how to contact us.

1. Log in to your PayPal account.
2. Click Contact Us at the bottom of the page.
3. Click Send us under Email Us.
4. Follow the instructions to complete the steps.

We value your business and appreciate your attention to this matter."

This raises the question of whether those of us who have used My Cash funds immaculately should e-mail PayPal and protest our innocence, in the hopes of receiving another month, year, or decade of impunity.

That's a judgment that is going to depend on the individual. Personally, I've already maxed out my PayPal My Cash loads for the calendar month, so any changes in monitoring and compliance won't affect me until next month in any case. Consequently, I'm going to sit tight and wait for more datapoints to come in, as they inevitably will.

It seems likely to me at this point that many who received the warning e-mail, myself included, don't in fact have anything to worry about since we've used the cards more or less as intended. If, on the other hand, in the coming weeks we start to see people report accounts closures, I'll know I need to consider scaling down my My Cash usage.

No, PayPal still can't be "trusted"

I've ranted before that "trust" is the wrong framework to think about your relationship with your bank, your loyalty program, or your landlord. Save "trust" for your partner, your friends, and your kids (well, maybe not your teenagers).

When I write about PayPal, I always include the caveat that while they have been very, very good to me, many folks have well-founded grievances against their arbitrary account closures and long hold times for the withdrawal of frozen funds.

That warning still applies.

But since it's one of the easiest ways to manufacture bonused spend on cards like the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards and American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass cards, it's remained a tool in my arsenal, and I hope it continues to for a long time to come.

Use rollover nights to earn Marriott Gold elite status

Continued experiments with posting schedule

As long as I've been writing this blog, I've posted on an extremely irregular schedule: my own. Typically, I get home from manufacturing spend, plop down at the desk and write about whatever I've been thinking about. When I'm done writing, I push "publish."

During Subscription Week, I started scheduling the "classic" posts from my archive on a specific schedule; I'd write up a post the night before and schedule it to post at 6 am (wherever Squarespace is based – in another hilarious shortcoming they don't tell you the timezone you're scheduled to post in).

I think there are advantages to both methods: I write in order to be read, so it makes sense to publish posts as soon as they're ready so folks can start reading them. On the other hand, I notice that when I publish posts late at night or very early in the morning there's more of an immediate response in the comments, since a lot of readers check my site first thing in the morning. If I publish in the afternoon, it might be 16-20 hours before readers finally get around to my posts.

At any rate, I'm going to keep the experiment going and schedule non-time-sensitive posts like today's to publish at 6 am. Meanwhile, I'll continue to publish urgent and time-sensitive posts as soon at they're ready. As always, I'd love to hear feedback one way or the other in the comments.

If you're going to manufacture Marriott Gold elite status, do it right

I mooted this idea on Twitter a few weeks back, and was reminded of it by Frequent Miler's recent post on manufacturing Marriott elite status.

Most folks know the headline benefits of the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Visa Signature: an annual free night certificate good at Category 1-5 Marriot properties; 15 "bonus" nights annually towards elite status; and an additional "bonus" night for every $3,000 spent on the card each calendar year.

Frequent Miler did a little math and came up with the figure of $105,000 in spend each year to earn Gold elite status: 35 elite nights at $3,000 each.

But in focusing on those headline benefits, he missed the forest for the trees. The key to manufacturing Marriott Gold elite status with the Premier card is rollover elite qualifying nights.

Marriott has a generous rollover night benefit: every night in excess of those needed for your current elite status are rolled over to the next elite qualifying year. But since Silver elite status requires just 10 nights, and the Premier Visa Signature gives 15 bonus nights towards elite status, Silver elite cardholders receive an automatic 5-night rollover "bump" towards Gold status at the beginning of each elite qualification year.

Keep Gold elite status for 2 full calendar years – then do it again

Since elite status, once earned, is good for the remainder of the year it's earned and the entire following year, you don't want to manufacture spend all the way to Gold elite status: you want to end the year with between 45 and 49 elite qualifying nights. In January, you'll rollover 35-39 of those nights (the amount in excess of Silver's 10-night requirement), and your 15 bonus nights will make you an instant Gold elite – for 2 full calendar years.

To keep your Gold elite status, you need to end the second calendar year of elite status again with exactly 45 elite qualifying nights – in other words, earn 30 elite qualifying nights over the course of 2 years. That's just $45,000 per calendar year, rather than the $105,000 Frequent Miler suggested – or less than $4,000 per month in Premier credit card spend, even if you don't have a single paid night.

Unfortunately, this technique can't be used as easily to earn Platinum elite status, for the simple reason that Platinum status requires just 25 more elite qualifying nights than Gold, so the most nights you could roll over to the next year and remain a Gold elite is 24. You'd then still have to manufacture your way all the way from 39 to 75 nights, spending $108,000 as early in the year as possible.

Conclusion

While I've noticed my bonus nights roll over in the past, this is the first year I'm attempting to achieve Gold elite status with this technique, so there may well be something I'm missing. Naturally, I'll post an update in January after my rollover and bonus nights are credited. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from readers who have succeeded (or failed!) in earning elite status this way.

Thrilling follow-up to subscription week!

Last Sunday I introduced Subscription Week, 5 posts (one, two, three, four, five) selected from my archives which, while wide-ranging, I felt represented a selection of the best work I do here for my readers and which I hoped would encourage some casual readers or fence-sitters to sign up for PayPal subscriptions to help ensure the continued viability of this site.

Those who subscribed by last Friday should already have received an e-mail with information about accessing the newsletter archive; if you didn't receive an e-mail (after checking your spam folders), drop me a note and I'll get it to you ASAP.

The subscription scoreboard

I gave all sorts of figures in my Sunday post, but since last week was Subscription Week, let's stick to PayPal subscriptions. Here were my subscription figures last Sunday:

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I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I am an eternal optimist. I have a lot of readers, a lot of Twitter followers, and a lot of e-mail correspondents, but just 120 PayPal subscribers. I sort of figured if I could get up to 200 active subscribers that would be a nice round number that might justify me continuing on at this for another year.

Well, we didn't quite get there. Here are my current subscription figures:

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Conclusion

When I first wrote about my move to self-employment a lot of folks suggested going to a subscription-only model. In a way that would be easier for me, since it would both let me talk openly about stuff I'm discrete about here on the blog and give me more time to work on my other writing projects (or "get a damn job!" as other commenters have suggested).

On the other hand, I love writing for a larger audience and helping people in the comments, by e-mail, and on Twitter. If I went subscription-only it seems like that kind of presence would naturally disappear.

So I don't know. It may even turn out that the little Google Adsense box in my sidebar will start spinning off gobs of cash and render the whole discussion moot.

I have until the beginning of February to renew my hosting agreement, and I have to make some kind of a decision by then (and no, credit card affiliate links are not on the table). Stay tuned!

Survival bias and the "ease" of travel hacking

There's been a lot of great writing lately in the travel hacking blogosphere about the traps being laid by affiliate bloggers and others who suggest that travel hacking is so easy that "anyone can do it."

My favorite post on the subject was "Airheads in the Rewards Credit Cards Bubble," by Ric Garrido at Loyalty Traveler, who was reacting to Mommy Points' claim that:

"In my 3.5 years of writing about this type of stuff, I only personally know one person who has gotten a rewards credit card primarily for the travel rewards, and then maxed it out on unneeded items. I know hundreds, even thousands, who have used rewards cards successfully to maximize the purchases they were going to make anyway."

Like Ric, I find this claim utterly preposterous.

Survival bias is why your intuition is wrong

There's a concept in economic history called "survival bias" which helps explain Mommy Points' intuition that it's easy for most folks to manage multiple credit card signup bonuses and juggle things like bonus categories, all without spending beyond their means.

Survival bias is the observation that statistics compiled based on currently-existing companies (for example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500) will show inflated returns over long periods of time because they don't take into account the $0 value of companies that fail and are no longer included in the relevant index.

In other words, if you bought a weighted average of the S&P 500 in 1957, you wouldn't actually accrue the entire gains suggested by the increase in the value of the index since then, since the index today contains different companies than when it launched – some of the original companies have become worthless (Delta Airlines is a component of the S&P 500 today, for example, but its pre-2007 shareholders were wiped out in bankruptcy).

In the same way, by definition an overwhelming majority of currently-active travel hackers are successful travel hackers, since out of the many people who start exploring the game each year, those who are unsuccessful will also usually no longer be active in the community, and won't be sharing their experience with bloggers like Mommy Points. What you end up with is a group of folks who think travel hacking is easy because it was easy for them — after all, they were and are successful at it.

The game is not easy and it is not for everyone

There are serious cognitive and organizational demands to being successful at travel hacking:

• Keeping track of credit card application dates and minimum spend requirements. If you can't or don't want to do this, you shouldn't be playing this game, as The Miles Professor's friend discovered;
• Keeping track of anniversary dates and annual fees. If you can't or don't want to do this, you'll end up paying annual fees that cut directly into the value you're earning from your credit cards;
• If you manufacture spend, keeping track of the value remaining on every single one of your prepaid and reload cards. A single card lost under a car seat or couch cushion, or a money order left in the bottom of a drawer can wipe out a month's profit, or more.

For a lot of folks, it's not fun, interesting, or easy to meet those challenges. They should find something else to do with their time.

None of this is meant to discourage new people from joining us. If you're a good fit, then travel hacking is a fun and lucrative way to achieve your goals, whether it's to travel more, travel cheaper, or just to pocket some extra cash every month.

But if the game isn't for you, then the sooner you recognize that fact – the better. You can still read trip reports about sucking down champagne in Lufthansa first class, and when you get to the inevitable call to action to apply for another credit card you don't need, you can just close the tab and get on with your life.

What you miss when you miss MS

In the last few weeks I saw posts from two of my favorite Boarding Area bloggers/punching bags that helped crystalize something I've been turning over in my head for a little while.

At the end of September, Gary at View From the Wing wrote about the AAA Visa card. Since I'm apparently the only person on earth who still buys AAA Visa gift cards, my ears perked up. But instead of actually exploring the card's (substantial) benefits, he put it up to a superficial comparison with the Chase Sapphire Preferred and called it a life.

Then just this week Lucky at One Mile at a Time wrote a handwringing piece entitled "Is The Mileage 'Game' Finally Dying?" He wrote:

"Let me start by explaining how I earn miles. Unlike others, I don’t do “manufactured spending.” I find that for the most part it’s only marginally “profitable,” so it’s not really something I do."

I strongly believe that no one should do anything they're not comfortable with, especially not just because you think everyone else is doing it. If you think it's wrong to come up with a business "idea" in order to apply for a small business credit card, you shouldn't do it. If you think it's unethical to take advantage of mistake fares, you shouldn't do it. And if you think manufactured spend is wrong, boring, or unprofitable, you shouldn't do it.

But to write that the travel hacking game is "dying" just because the tiny plot you studiously tend is going bust is ridiculous.

Which brings me back to Gary's post about the AAA Visa card. If you know anything about manufactured spend, the idea of earning 3% cash back (50% more than most non-bonused spend) on PIN-enabled Visa gift cards that are about 40% cheaper than the leading national brand ($3 versus $4.95) is an opportunity worth exploring.

If your job depends on maintaining the pretense that manufactured spend doesn't exist, you end up with nonsense like this:

"First off, I value Chase Ultimate Rewards points at more than 1.5 cents apiece. So 2 Chase points is worth more to me than 3 cents (the 3% back on travel offered by this card)."

I've said it before and I'm happy to say it again: you should not worry about the earning rate of your credit cards, unless you manufacture spend or are reimbursed for travel purchases by your employer (or are self-employed in a business with large credit card purchases, of course); you should put all your spend on a 2% cash back credit card and redeem your points for cash whenever you happen to meet a redemption threshold.

Spending money on goods and services is simply not a realistic way of achieving either cash or travel goals in the way that signup bonuses and manufactured spend are.

The AAA Visa credit card is a great deal

I don't have a AAA Visa credit card, but here's the relevant line from the card's terms and conditions:

"Earn 3 points per dollar (consisting of 2 bonus points and 1 base point) for Net Purchases made with the card through any participating AAA Club when AAA is the merchant of record[.]"

I can also report from my own experience that in-person Visa gift card purchases from AAA (where available) are coded identically to all other in-person AAA purchases – there's no special merchant code assigned to gift card purchases as opposed to, say, cruise reservations.

Subscription week: Alaska Airlines debit card

[In today's final installment of Subscription Week, I've picked one of my favorite posts, thanks to the simplicity and genius of the mile-earning possibility: the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card. A person who was only interested in flying for pennies on the dollar could theoretically dispense with "manufactured spend," in the traditional sense, and just cycle tens of thousands of dollars through a mile-earning debit card to pay for all their award travel. Thanks to this post, and the signup link I shared, my readers were able to earn hundreds of thousands of Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles before the card finally disappeared for good. I also shared that free peer-to-peer Venmo transactions successfully earned miles with the card.

Since this post appeared, I've similarly exhorted my readers to sign up for the Suntrust Delta SkyMiles World Check Card (now closed to new applicants) and the UFB Direct Airline Rewards Checking account (still available!). This post originally appeared on May 24, 2013 — check out the comments there.]

Alaska Airlines debit card still available

I use the Alaska Airlines debit card issued by Bank of America and linked to my Bank of America checking account fairly aggressively in order to manufacture Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles, earning 1 Mileage Plan mile for every $2 I spend on the debit card, including PIN-based and signature transactions.

I consider Mileage Plan miles to be one of the most valuable airline currencies (although I credit my Delta flights to my Delta Skymiles account in order to retain valuable  Medallion elite status), since they can be used for one-way award tickets on Alaska Airlines and American Airlines flights (including "last seat" availability on Alaska-operated flights), and they allow you to combine one Delta-operated leg with another operated leg by Alaska or American, something you can't do with Delta's own Skymiles.

There is a lot of mistaken speculation (for example, in this flyertalk thread) that Bank of America no longer issues the Alaska Airlines debit card to new customers, so I want to make sure my readers are aware that you can still apply for the card. I first heard about the currently working link from Gary at View from the Wing, who heard about it from Free Frequent Flyer Miles.

So, if you have a Bank of America checking account, you can apply for an Alaska Airlines debit card here.

You can generate lots of easy, free, and valuable miles by using your Alaska Airlines debit card to fund Venmo transactions, load Bluebird and Gobank at Walmart, or pay other bills that only accept debit cards (although some transactions, like tax payments, may not earn miles).

One final note on the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card: unlike co-branded credit cards, your Alaska Airlines miles do not post after your monthly checking account statement closes. Rather, the miles are issued at the beginning of the month following the miles-earning debit card activity. I'll typically see my miles post to my Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account between the 5th and 10th of the month, for the preceding month's debit card transactions.

Subscription week: PayPal Extras MasterCard

[Back on Sunday I explained that this week, I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts to encourage readers who find value in what I'm doing to sign up for a weekly or monthly PayPal subscription. Today's Subscription Week post is a favorite of mine: starting with a few scattered references here and there, I outlined a brand new manufactured spending technique which, while it doesn't offer outsized earning potential (a little over $400 per year), can be easily integrated into techniques many of us are using already. This post originally ran on December 18, 2013 — check out the comments there.]

As always, before I get started with today's news I have to get a few things out of the way.

First of all, the hack that I'm discussing today involves PayPal. I know everybody hates PayPal. Heck, I hate PayPal too. But they've also been very good to me. If you feel like ranting about PayPal, the comments, as always, are open.

Second, as always I want to give credit for this hack where credit is due. That's a pretty short list this time. I originally got the idea from a comment left here on the blog by Phil. If you read this, thanks Phil! Over the course of the day or two I spent researching this, I was only able to find one veiled reference (I think) left on a Frequent Miler post over the summer. So, thanks to DFW, too, I guess.

Finally, I haven't tried this personally. I'll be applying for new cards at the end of January or beginning of February, and will of course post an update then. In the meantime, I would love to hear about readers' experiences if they're able to make this work – or, especially, if not.

THE PAYPAL BUSINESS DEBIT MASTERCARD

As my readers know, one of my favorite tools for manufactured spend is the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard. It has two amazing functions:

• It earns 1% cash back on all non-PIN transactions, including all online transactions;
• It's a PIN-enabled debit card that can be loaded using PayPal My Cash cards and emptied at Walmart.

This is an amazing combination of features. But unfortunately as it stands, you have to choose which benefit to take advantage of: access to debit features like money orders, Walmart Bill Pay, and prepaid card loads (Bluebird and Gobank), or 1% cash back.

YOUR NEW .83% CASH BACK DEBIT CARD

When you don't have enough funds in your PayPal account to cover a Debit MasterCard transaction, instead of having your transaction rejected, PayPal gives you the option of pulling the funds from a backup funding source. You can choose any bank account linked to your PayPal account, or you can use a PayPal Extras MasterCard.

The PayPal Extras MasterCard earns "points" which can be redeemed for cash into your PayPal account: you can redeem 6,000 points for $50 in cash, or 0.83 cents per point. You can only earn 50,000 points per year (8 $50 redemptions, plus some change).

According to Phil's comment, these backup funding transactions earn points on the Extras MasterCard.

Since I don't have an Extras MasterCard yet, I can't confirm the limits on these backup funding transactions or whether they earn points. The standard limit on backup funding transactions is $1,000 per day, but I don't know if the same limit applies when the backup funding source is a PayPal Extras MasterCard.

IT GETS BETTER

As I mentioned, the backup funding source is only used when you don't have enough money in your PayPal account to cover a debit card transaction. That means that rather than loading your PayPal account with a PayPal My Cash card and then emptying the balance with your Debit MasterCard, you will want to use your Debit MasterCard when your account balance does not cover the transaction.

Amazingly your PayPal Extras MasterCard is managed from within your PayPal account and you can use your PayPal balance to pay off your Extras MasterCard. That means you can load a PayPal My Cash card to your account and move the money directly into your Extras MasterCard to pay off the balance you incurred using your Debit MasterCard.

WHAT IT MEANS

Let's take a look at a simple pass through this hack.

• Assume a PayPal balance of $0.70;
• Use your PayPal Business Debit MasterCard to purchase a $1,000 money order from Walmart;
• After using the $0.70 in your account (and covering the money order purchase fee), your PayPal Extras MasterCard will be charged $1,000;
• Buy 2 $500 PayPal My Cash cards at CVS for $7.90 and load them to your PayPal account;
• Move the money from your PayPal account to your Extras MasterCard;
• Redeem 1,000 points for $8.33 (when you have 6,000 points).

You'll have spent $8.60 for the money order fee and My Cash cards, and earned $8.33 worth of Extras points – and manufactured $1,007.90 in spend at CVS.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Does it work? Are you going to try it? Should I have kept my mouth shut? Inquiring minds want to know! See you in the comments.

Quick hit: register for additional $50 cash back from Discover

I saw a number of folks on Twitter this week talking about a targeted offer for Discover cardholders to choose one merchant – in addition to the 4th quarter revolving 5% cash back categories – where they would be able to earn 5% cash back on up to $1,000 in spend between the date of registration and November 30, 2014. Unfortunately, I wasn't targeted.

Imagine my glee last night when Twitter user H. Scott shared a working link directly to the registration page for the promotion.

To select your 5% cash back merchant:

1. Log into your Discover credit card account;
2. Click on this link.

And enjoy your $50 in extra cash back (assuming you have a chance to visit Walgreens once or twice before the end of November)!

Subscription week: "old" Blue Cash

[As I explained Sunday, this week I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts, with the hope that readers, both regular and new, will decide that this blog is worth supporting through a weekly or monthly PayPal subscription. Today's post is by a huge margin my most popular, and highlights a key difference between this blog and many others in the travel hacking space: since I don't and have never received any affiliate money from credit card companies, I can write about incredibly lucrative but – because of affiliate agreements – essentially ignored products like what's known as the "old" Blue Cash card, from American Express. While the post has aged well, there are a few oversights: Reward Dollars can be redeemed for statement credits, not cash directly deposited into a bank account. Additionally, my claim that American Express doesn't code 7-11 store locations as gas station was hyperbolic; 7-11 stores with gas pumps are frequently coded as gas stations by American Express. This post originally ran on January 3, 2014 — see that original post for comments.]

I wrote early last month about my search for a new "workhorse" card to replace my Citi ThankYou Preferred card which, during my first 12 billing cycles, earned 5 ThankYou points per dollar spent at grocery stores, gas stations, and drug stores. With just a week left in that promotional period, imagine my excitement in seeing this FlyerTalk thread.

By opening this link in a new browser, "private browsing" session or "incognito" window, it's still possible to apply for what people are calling the "old" Blue Cash card. This "old" card has a totally different earning structure than the "new" Blue Cash Everyday and Blue Cash Preferred:

• On your first $6,500 in purchases made with the card: 1% cash back at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores, and 0.5% everywhere else;
• after spending $6,500: 5% cash back at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores, and 1% cash back everywhere else.

In other words this card is roughly comparable to the Citi ThankYou Preferred offer that's expiring for me, and I plan on applying for this card later today (after I decide on some additional cards for this impromptu application cycle).

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Your net annual earning rate will be slightly less than 5% because of the lower earning rate on your first $6,500 in spend;
• but unlike ThankYou points, which must be redeemed for mortgage checks, student loan rebate checks, or travel through the ThankYou booking tool in order to get a full 1 cent per point in value, Blue Cash "reward dollars" can be redeemed directly for cash;
• 5% cash back is only awarded on gas purchases of up to $400;
• and in my experience American Express does not code 7-11 store locations as gas stations and does not award gas station bonus points for purchases there.

Here on the blog I tend not to make explicit recommendations, since every reader's travel goals and application timelines are different.

In this case I'm inclined to make an exception and say that if you are able to take advantage of these bonus categories, you should strongly consider applying for this card right now. This offer will not last forever, and you will regret not carrying this card when you start reading about how much cash back other members of the community are earning.

Subscription week: Evolve Money

[As I explained Sunday, this week I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts. One of the most exciting new developments this year in the world of manufactured spend was Evolve Money, an online bill payment service that, when launched, allowed tens of thousands of dollars in monthly online bill payments to a variety of merchants, which could be funded with prepaid debit cards. When the service first launched, payments could even be funded with credit cards, something my PayPal subscribers learned about all the way back in February, 2014. Unfortunately, that loophole was closed soon after a mainstream blogger publicized it. Much of the original research into Evolve Money took place on this blog, and can be accessed through my "Evolve Money" tag. This is the post that began it all. It originally ran on January 16, 2014 — see that original post for comments.]

HOW EVOLVE MONEY WORKS

Evolve Money is a service that allows you to pay your bills online – for free – using a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover debit card, REloadit packs (available at some grocery stores), or a product called "Evolve Pay Bucks."

You can create an account to store your payees, or use the service as a guest and input your bill information each time you pay a bill.

After searching their database of payees, you select the biller you want to pay, enter your account information, then choose your payment method.

That's it. It took me a few seconds to set up an account, add my MasterCard debit card, and make a number of experimental bill payments. I'll keep my readers updated with those results.

WHAT PAYEES ARE AVAILABLE?

There's good news and bad news on this front.

First, the bad news: as far as I can tell no bank's credit card division is listed as an eligible payee.

The good news is there are a lot of payees that are potentially lucrative. The list is incredibly long (it's free to search, so go check it out for yourself), but here are some highlights I found:

• Mortgages: Bank of America Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase Mortgage, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, PNC Mortgage, Countrywide Home Loans, etc.;
• Student Loans: Federal Student Loans - All Servicers, Discover Private Student Loans, Citibank Loan/Private Student Loan/Line of Credit, Acs Educational Services, Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, etc.;
• Savings Accounts: Utah Educational Savings Plan, TD Ameritrade 529 College Savings Plan, Schwab 529 College Savings Plan, etc.;
• Insurance Premiums: Blue Cross Blue Shield (every state);
• Tax Payments: hundreds and hundreds of city and county revenue departments are listed.

WHICH DEBIT CARDS WORK?

I can confirm that the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard does work for bill payments, and these transactions are processed as signature purchases which should earn 1% cash back. My regular readers know what that means: you can load your PayPal account using PayPal My Cash cards purchased with a rewards-earning credit card, then earn 1% cash back liquidating those funds paying bills you wouldn't ordinarily be able to pay with a credit card. You'll be earning your credit card rewards – and a small profit – for transactions that wouldn't otherwise earn rewards.

If you are currently paying a mortgage or student loan using withdrawals from your bank account, take a look at the list of available payees and decide whether you can take advantage of this service instead and earn rewards on those payments.