Even when I have offered to show them all the receipts (for gift cards, MO's, bill payments) they still **** their pants. Even when I explain exactly what I'm doing and that there is zero cash involved, they seems to want to wallow in their willful ignorance.
My plan at the moment is to open maybe 5 checking accounts and run them up gradually. Start by depositing maybe $1K/mo MO's in each, along with 1/5 of my monthly allowance. (I retired early and give myself an allowance from my savings to live on; I have no pension or social security.) Then pay 1/5 of my bills from each, including some of the MS accounts. Perhaps build them up in a couple months by going to $2K, maybe buy some CD's along the way.
I'm also going to dip my toe in paying the CC bills directly with MO's. The one of my cc accounts that I've had the longest, has the biggest credit limit, and where I have the strongest outside relationship with the sponsor, I know that in the past I have paid with fairly large amounts of MO's from time to time.
I was doing maybe $75K/mo of MO's, if I can build it back up to even half that over 6-12 months, well, it's still more than zero.