Originally Posted by
mileage junkie
One of the holy grails of all frequent flyers has always been finding a way to use a mileage-earning credit card to essentially "buy cash" with no, or truly minimal fees. (A la...Presidential Dollar Coins)
The United States Postal Service though does not allow purchases of money orders with CREDIT cards, only debit ("pin-based") cards.
However I believe there ARE still a few debit cards that do earn frequent flyer miles.
You should easily be able to find more information about those cards by searching the Flyertalk boards.
There are lots of debit cards that earn miles - but I'm looking for something with a little 'amplitude', meaning more than 1pt or 1m per dollar.
I can use the SPG Amex to get 1.25pts/$ if I transfer out to the correct program. Ideally, I'm waiting for news on how existing Travelocity Mastercards will be treated - even if our account is forcibly changed to an Amex, I can use that Travelocity Amex to buy the prepaid debit card. If this works, then I only need to buy $10,000 in money orders to earn a $400 travel voucher.
That's the piece your post was missing - using a prepaid debit card in the middle to buy the money orders as a tool to leverage better earning potential from a mileage credit card.