Lemma

If you do a large transaction, it's not that much, less than the MO fees, but the reason people do it is the 50 cents per transaction is better than paying an extra $1 per $500 to buy Visa GC instead of VR. The maximum amount you can load per day is $2500 so if you load $2000 you can buy one MO for $1000 and one for $998.10 at Walmart and pay 70 cents per MO and the 50 cent transaction fee for a total of $1.90. Getting $1998.10 out of $2015.90 (4x $503.95) is about a 0.883% loss, compared to buying a $999.30 MO with two $500 GCs, where you get $999.30 out of $1009.90 in CC charges for a loss of about 1.05%. That's over a 16% reduction in total cost. Another way to think about it is the 50 cent fee is divided between 4 VR cards so you are paying an extra 12.5 cents per VR instead of the extra $1 per VR you would pay if you bought GC instead. If you loaded more on the card before buying MO, the fee would be diluted even more. If you are just going to do $500 at a time, it's a much less attractive proposition.

In reality, though, there are other methods besides BB that are cheaper than MVD (or BB), though also limited, such as AP and Visa Buxx. So the threshold for how much MS you would have to do before this card becomes a good idea is actually higher than 5k/month. It is a good alternative to the GC to MO route, though.