Alright, in this case why is nobody opening up a store and using this to generate tens of thousands of points..?

Wouldn't it violate the agreement with the merchant bank or else visa/mc?

Well from the visa/mc standpoint, you're just making a purchase...

The only thing I could find in the Google Checkout Terms of Use is that "the Seller is not to use this Service as a means of providing a cash advance to the Buyer", which this sort of operation may be construed as...

I have two separate companies legitimately and I subcontracts with the other so could I have this done through google checkout? is there a limit on the amount. the # of $ is in the millions for the year...

and i'm not violating any cash advance stuff... currently company A buys/subcontracts services to company B and we pay wire transfer fees between each company which we would also eliminate with google checkout...at least for 2007

now there no AMEX double point promotion to use google checkout, is there

No limit that I could find in the Terms of Use, so this process seems perfect for you. Obviously read through it yourself to make sure but...

And I wish there was a promotion

Would this really be worth the cost?

Well, lets say you needed even 5,000 more SPG points on your SPG Amex to hit 20K. You charge 5K, get that back to pay the CC, and now youu got 20K. If you transfer that to an airline you get a bonus of 5K points.

Doesn't seem like a bad idea, but if you opened a account under your name and just kept charging under your name, I'm sure google would catch on. But if you and a friend opened an account.....

Oh just read this

Just have a friend paypal you and vice versa money back and forth.

You have to pay a 2.9% fee on credit card payments

As I understand it, Paypal only charges for withdrawals under certain limited circumstances.

They don't charge if you just take the money out and put it into your bank account. They do, however, charge you for the credit card transaction, making this not worth it...

I did a search for Paypal and this seemed the closest to what I was looking for.

I've not bothered with the BA Chase Visa (US based) until now but it has a deal where if you spend $30k in a calendar year you get a voucher for a free companion ticket when using miles. I've had a similar voucher with my BA Amex in the UK and it is excellent.

I've just signed up for the card and $30k before the end of the year in personal spend is likely to be difficult for me but a lightbulb came on about using Paypal. It seems a bad way to generate miles from a cost perspective but if I could spend around $30/$1000 to get this voucher it could be worth doing.

Is the information in this thread from 2years back still relevant?

Thanks
M

I wouldn't encourage you to generate spending this way.
Paypal has became very strict with sending large amounts of amount between personal accounts (using credit card).

In worst case scenario, you may be on the hook for large amount of money withhold by paypal and it will be very time consuming and pain stacking to get the money back from Paypal.

If you absolutely have to generate spending, I would suggest you looking in to low fee prepaid gift cards from visa, mastercard, american express or discover. So that you can use those prepaid cards well in to next year (the 3% fee you are paying on paypal might very well cover the interest you lose until you spend the gift cards).

I'm curious whether this applies to personal towards business accounts. I'm not clear why Paypal would/should care if you send money every month (say, $10k) from your own account to a corporate merchant account.

The benefits are huge - if you have a points multiplier on your card, say 1.5x, the txn fees are 2.2%, you are looking at ~$1,350 to get 100k points - which is nothing to sneer at.

I'm having trouble replicating your calculation. If the card earns 1.5 miles per dollar and the transaction fee is 0.022 per dollar, the cost per mile must be 0.0146, which is $1,466 per 100,000.