In a previous post, I described how to meet minimum credit card spends by buying American Express gift cards and turning them into cash using a service called Square. Since then, I’ve heard from a few people who have done this that their Square accounts have been frozen due to being under “investigation”. They didn’t lose any money, but they are no longer able to accept credit card payments through the service. After looking more carefully through the Square User Agreement, I found the following: “You also may not use the Service to process cash advances.” So, while this language appeared as an afterthought at the end of a somewhat unrelated topic, it seems that the company takes it seriously. So, going forward, I do not recommend using this service to pay yourself.
What other options do you have? You can, of course, continue to use Square for all legitimate purposes. If a friend or relative wants to pay you for goods or services using a gift card they own, that should be OK.
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