Trying to take the optimistic view... If this letter is real, it basically says Target and Amex collectively discovered that they were being gamed by manufactured spenders and decided to take action.

It would have been substantially easier for them to simply say, effectively immediately, no more credit card loads on Redbird, than it would be to try to ferret out the "bad actors" by looking at transaction history. Just like CVS did with Vanilla reloads, etc.

That would suggest that the ability to load with a credit card is likely to continue, at least for those who can avoid their "suspicious activity" algorithm.