Note: On January 8, 2015 American Express sent out a notice to a large number of Bluebird & Serve cardholders informing them that loading capabilities on their accounts had been terminated. For more information, see: Amex kills Bluebird and Serve for manufactured spend
Now that it is possible to set PINs on Visa gift cards, my interest in reloading Bluebird at Walmart has been rekindled. Until now, I’ve found it to easier and more rewarding to load my Bluebird account with Vanilla Reload cards. Now that giftcards have PINs, though, Walmart swipe reloads have become a fantastic way to turn gift card balances into cash (see “Gift card PINs“).
On Monday, with four gift-cards and two Bluebird cards in-hand, I headed to Walmart. I wasn’t looking forward to the idea of trying to explain to a cashier what I wanted to do, so I looked for an automated solution. I decided to try out Walmart’s “MoneyCenter Express” ATM (see photo below).
I couldn’t find an option to reload Bluebird cards, but I remembered that Bluebird was essentially an upgrade to Walmart’s older MoneyCard solution. So, under the heading “Card Services”, I selected “Walmart MoneyCard”:
The machine prompted me to swipe my MoneyCard. I swiped my Bluebird card instead. I then followed the prompts to reload my card. I selected to pay by debit card and then swiped my gift card and entered my PIN. The payment was accepted and a receipt printed out showing the old and new balance on my Bluebird account. Success! As expected, no fee was charged for the swipe reload. I then repeated the process with 3 more gift cards across two Bluebird cards (mine and my wife’s).
Keep in mind that swipe reloads are limited to $1000 per day and $5000 per month (across both Vanilla Reloads and swipe reloads).
While I still don’t enjoy driving out of my way to Walmart, the ability to reload Bluebird via Walmart’s special ATMs makes the process quick and easy.
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[…] if you have large payments to make? More importantly, consider the alternatives: Do you have an easy way to cash out the gift cards without a fee or with a smaller fee? If so, paying taxes with Visa or MasterCard gift cards is not a good […]
Was just looking at the bluebird site, and the limit for debit deposits appears to be $200/day, $1000/month. Is this effectively dead? ( not driving to walmart for $200 at a time..). Thanks.
Jay, the documented limits for debit loads only apply to online debit loads. When you load in-person, it is the cash reload limits that apply even when you pay with a debit card (yes, it’s confusing).
The Walmart Money Center Express ATMs have all disappeared from Northern California stores. Has anyone had luck finding one in the region?
sacramento still haves kiosk in most of there stores
Does anybody happen to know what is the process and code to tell the walmart register ppl to do to add the money into the BB account? Thanks.
gargoyle999: Great!
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Mel: Hmm, I wonder if you’d get 5% cash back buying $500 Visa cards from giftcardmall.com? It should work. Alternatively, use Amazon Payments which also counts as an online purchase.
Discover card has 5% cashback in online shopping from October thru Decemeber. Any good place to buy prepaid debit cards taking advantage of this cashback category?
Mel: Tell the cashier that you want to reload your Bluebird card and that you’ll pay with a debit card.
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gargoyle999: That’s great. It’s about time that they added the Bluebird button!
I did another load yesterday and the kiosk was working again. Used the Bluebird button without a problem!
I did a reload on Sunday. I noticed an actual Bluebird button to select right under the Walmart Money Card button. I’ve previously used the Money Card button as shown above. I tried to use it but the kiosk was acting up and was very slow so I gave up and went to the counter.
What are the steps to do this over the counter?
Do you ask to reload you walmart money card but then give them the bluebird card instead? (then just pay for the reload using a prepaid debit card)
Can I reload my bluebird card at the walmart atm using CASH intead of giftcards
Paymon: Yes, I think so, but I’ve never tried it.
[…] come up with yet more innovative and sick (see above) ways to push yet more affiliate links. “Bluebird swipe reloads via ATM“. And “The hunt for perfect gift cards, part 1“. This is just getting […]
I do not understand this .
Please explain.
So I get a BB card. I buy these gift cards with my airline credit card. Then I load these on my BB card.
Now what ? Use my BB to pay my airline card ???
What about the fees that come with the gift cards?
Slop: Yes, you have the idea right. If you buy the right gift cards or Vanilla Reload cards (which are a lot easier) your cost per mile will be about 1 cent or less. Depending on how much you value your miles, this can be a great deal.
mike: I’ve had the exact same thing happen as well (also with two different Bluebird cards). I like SteveW’s solution better, but if this does happen again to you I found that once the store employee logs in, they can press “continue” and then the swipe reload will work. Otherwise, as you said, going to the counter works too.
in every instance, i can only load 3x $500 GCs of any type at ATM machine, then the msg that an ‘associate must come’ & something about compliance limit reached. Appears that you can load 3 times and that’s it. Anyone else? Had this happen at 2 diff stores- and this is even when switching from one bluebird to a second one (1k load on one, then 500 on second, then msg and can’t load a second 500 on second card). Seems stupid but hard coded- so can’t simply load 1k on each of 2 birds. But then if u take second bird to register, it loads fine. So it’s on the ATM machine itself. Who else is experiencing this? How much are you able to load at one time at the ATM machine?
@Mike: I had the same problem, with the same amounts as you. Try taking a walk around the store to break up your reloads. It worked fine for me doing 2 loads at a time.
Yes, chase gift cards loaded to bb worked for me at the money center and register. Just not the walmart kiosk/atm.
Thanks Mark!