AmEx for Target: $400/week credit card ATM withdrawals for 1.3%+ in certain cities
 

I would like to thank Astrophsx for sharing his discovery of this card at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16822687-post409.html .

The "American Express for Target" reloadable prepaid card is being tested in Atlanta, Baltimore (reportedly includes DC and much of Northern Virginia), Chicago, Denver and Miami metropolitan areas.

Fees:
Reload: $3, reloadable by Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
ATM Withdrawal: $2
Annual: $10 (works out to ~0.1% for depositing 1k every 5 weeks in the scheme discussed below)

Limits:
Maximum reload $1000/card/day (based on $3/reload, cheapest fee = 0.3%),
Maximum reload $5000/person/28 days [Thanks, MyTravels, for the correction.]
Maximum ATM withdrawals $200/card/week (based on $2/withdrawal, cheapest fee = 1%).
Maximum cards/person: 2, cannot be opened same day.
Maximum card value: $2,500

One application: load $2k into two cards, withdraw $400/week at a no-fee ATM for a cost of ~1.4% + lost interest over a month + your time visiting a no-fee ATM (.3% for deposit + 1% for withdrawals + ~.1% for annual fees = ~1.4%).

URL's:
http://www.americanexpress.com/target
https://www212.americanexpress.com/d...00d0faad94RCRD
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1100165/

An unusual feature of this prepaid card is that it is reloadable from other Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards. blase at FlyerTalk reports being able to purchase a $500 card with a British Airways Visa, and sf3895 at milepoint reports being able to reload it with a prepaid Visa card.

This card is linked to your social security number, so I suspect that, within the limits of financial privacy laws, AmEx might remember everything you do with it forever.

That said, I would be curious to know if anyone loaded this card from an AmEx gift card purchased via the bigcrumbs 1.6% rebate or bought an AmEx GC via bigcrums using this card.

Other ideas:

1. In addition to being rechargeable online, this card can be recharged at participating Target stores, which might make reloads look like ordinary shopping at Target, maybe reducing the chance that a credit card issue would try to reclassify the transaction as a cash advance, or start mysteriously cancelling your AmEx GC orders, etc. Recharging in the store might also make the program look better to management if it seems to pull customers into Target stores. However this is all very speculative.

2. The relatively low load fee and high maximum value might occasionally have other applications, such as combining or cashing out other gift cards.

Please feel free to post problems, information and your bright ideas about using this card. I plan to try to summarize by editing this message on an ongoing basis.

Edited 7/31/2011: Thanks to MyTravels for pointing out that the $10/card annual fee would add about 0.1% to the costs of depositing $1k per card every 5 weeks, and that the maximum reload per person per 28 days in the terms and conditions is $5k, not $4k. I am sorry I don't know a way to change "1.3%+" to "~1.4%" in the thread subject. Also, thanks to BeachMiles for noting "Baltimore test area includes Washington DC and much of Northern Virginia."]

Edited 8/3/2011: Thanks to blase at FlyerTalk and sf3895 at milepoint for reporting success with buying the card using a mileage earning visa and reloading with a visa gift card, respectively.

reserved

Looks similar to Pass and other AMEX options. Not worth the effort to me but thanks for the info.

If you buy one in Miami can you re-load it at any target?

The most important difference for FlyerTalkers is that you may be able to get rewards by reloading this card.

Confirmation or refutation of this would be most welcome.

Sounds interesting. I'm in the Chicago area and I have to go to my Target tomorrow anyway, so I think I will pick one up.

My only question - how do you find no-fee ATMs?? If I bank at Chase, do I assume that other than the $2 fee, I will not be charged anything additional for using one of these AmEx for Target cards at my Chase ATM?

Looks like the maximum initial load is $500.

When you purchase the Card, there is a minimum initial load amount of $.01 and a maximum initial load amount of $500.

Correct.

They will ask for ID, DOB and SS# at purchase.

Remember the easiest way to kill a deal is to have a dedicated thread about it. Learn from mistakes do not keep making them over and over.

Thanks for info. Seems like too much work for small amount of benefits. Not worth it to me. However, it might be good as one of "last resort" methods to hit spending requirement.

Amex (probably) remembers, and is notoriouosly fickle...

That was gonna be my query as well. Where and how do you target (no pun intended) "no-fee" ATMs?

Smaller local banks usually do not charge if you use their ATM's at the bank. My bank does not charge if you use the ATM in their lobby or drive thru. Look for locally owned banks. They are also friendlier and they didn't get money in the bailout and the money generally stays local.

Why would you think Chase not charge you? You are not using a Chase card at Chase network.

You will be charged by Chase for using its ATM with a card NOT from Chase.

Your Chase bank account's ATM card will be free at Chase ATM. Every thing else would be subject to $3 fee a pop. You can test it out by using a Non Chase ATM card to try - the screen should display a message to warn you the transaction would cost you X amount of fee. Do you still want to continue? You can then abort the transaction and not being charge the fee, nor withdraw any money.

The above scenario should apply to 99% of any bank's ATMs.

I guess lucky for me I have a no-fee ATM where I work... about 15 feet from my office actually. This could be of interest I guess ... only I do not live in one of those cities.

Wouldn't recommend loading the GC since $3 fee per load. Even at $500 denominations that's higher than you want.

Can't imagine that this earns points while all other Amex Debit cards haven't done so in the past: eg PASS.

Has anyone confirmed points earning on this?

Who wants to be the guinea pig?;) I'm not anywhere near the test market cities... though I wonder how long before Target rolls it out elsewhere.

One thing is that the PASS card is only reloadable from an Amex card (or bank account) so it was quite easy for Amex to not award points for it. If the Target card can be used with Visa and MC that may open up possibilities.

If in-store reloads are rung up just like any other purchase, including gift/prepaid cards, it wouldn't show up any different than a normal store purchase, as far as your credit card is concerned.

Online reloads may be more of a problem depending how Amex categorizes it.

Includes Washington DC
 

"The "American Express for Target" reloadable prepaid card is being tested in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver and Miami."

The Baltimore area seems to include Washington DC , and well into Virginia.

Just bought one
 

So I just got back from Target where I bought one of the new American Express for Target cards. They are selling these at the registers rather than customer service, which I found surprising. Also, when you load up the card (max initial load is $500), they ask for all of your personal info right there at the register. The cashier asked me for my driver's license so he could input my address, and then I was instructed to input my SSN, birthdate and phone # on the keypad. Fortunately the cashier seemed pretty familiar with these cards already, so everything went smoothly.

I tried setting up my account online but it seems as though the functionality is limited for a few days yet. of course I will be unable to get cash at any ATMs without a pin, but it also looks like I am unable to load the card again until they validate all of my information.

So what everyone wants to know - it seems as though this purchase WILL earn miles, as I made sure to buy it along with the rest of my Target purchases, so as not to have a separate transaction. My total purchase was around $562, and I put it on my BA card. I don't see how there's any way they could discern what part of that $562 was for this card as opposed to other items I purchased, so I am pretty confident it will get coded as a mileage-earning purchase.

Security tip: use an incorrect PIN if you're going to test ATM's to try to find one that is fee free. When I declined an ATM's initial offer to look up my balance, and then just asked to make a withdrawal, many ATM's took me to the screen that asks the additional withdrawal fee apparently before doing anything that would reveal that my PIN was incorrect.

This might not always be so. For example, I used my real PIN at 7-11 and declined the transaction when the machine told me it want to charge me $2.95, and my bank activity now shows a withdrawal followed by a matching deposit.

Sorry if I'm belaboring the obvious just because I didn't think of it until I had given my PIN to a couple of ATM's that I don't normally use.

By the way, my ATM at work is apparently fee free (I actually did a withdrawal). I have not yet tried local ATM's identified by allpointnetwork or moneypass.

Can the tradecraft on the public board! Or would you like my AMEX Financial Review Officer's private number so you can call her and kill the deal quicker?
Some people hate on what we do and they sleep better not knowing about it.

And yes, AMEX can see what you are up to with their cards.

This tradecraft should be public - doesn't provide the opposition with anything useful to hunt down and close.

You would expect the noobs to learn from their mistakes, NOT! :D

Some Texas Credit Union ATMs
 

http://freecuatms.org/index.cfm?CUID...?CUID=aplusfcu

Says "totally free". Might be worth a try. One of my banks is listed.
I'll be in Denver next week and will have to do some shopping.

When I've purchased GCs at ShopRite (area supermarket chain) they can take up to 48 hrs to be activated. This may be similar.

received the targeted email as well and just got and activated card today

have yet to digest what to try this with and all that. Not sure if it's yet worth even having

:)MM

Just tried loading this card online and it appears the method of loading it with a credit card is now no longer available. I will try in the store tomorrow to load it with a card and see what happens.

Thanks for the update Blase. I'm going to try buying one today at my local Target. There is a fee-free ATM down the street from me.

So with a maximum withdrawal of $200/wk, per card, it seems like you could realistically only be netting 400 miles a week (assuming 1 mile/dollar spent) per person. In all, 20,000 miles a year assuming you don't miss a week. Seems like an awful lot of work. However, if you can combine with bigcrumbs, you might actually not have to pay anything for them. Might make it worth it for some people.

I would find it more helpful for meeting minimum spend requirements than accruing regular miles.

great for those with an AARP card to exploit!

Yep, finding no-fee ATM's seems like an almost impossible challenge.

I even found an ATM at a credit union up the street from me that was supposed to be no fee, checked it out and there was a $2 fee. The other kicker? $20 withdrawal, max. Ha!

Blase, are they still allowing reload with credit cards?

In store only, up to $1k load after initial max $500 load.

A nice surprise today... there is a $10 Target gift card coupon with $50 purchase floating around (non-unique) that expires 12/3. I will only say it works to reload. Not sure if it works to buy. Register allows it... whether your cashier does is YMMV. Good luck!

PS: I double dipped and got 4 $5 LEGO gift cards with the giftcards after the 2 reloads, ha!

Wish the reload and atm fees weren't so high. I'm interesting in using this to meet minimum spend requirement on AMX Delta Reserve Card to pay my mortgage.

Target prepaid
 

Blogger was talking about this prepaid amex, which can be loaded by cc, and withdrawn by atm.

Any experiences?

Yep, you can get reloaded at Target. Only credit card reload and no prepaid card reload.

$3 loads at Target
$3 ATM withdrawals
1 Free ATM withdrawal per month

Supposedly once you have the card, it can be reloaded at any Target. IIRC, I read that on the FTG

Do you really need a new thread to just ask this? Could have just searched !

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...in-cities.html

Now wait for blogger to spot this and write a blog to spoon feed you!

Bloggers found it... That is where i read it, but it was non descript. Im on here daily and i haven't seen or noticed this thread yet... Pls merge or delete and ill just rely on that other thread

Thanks