With the imminent demise of purchasing variable load cards at Office Depot, I was wondering about a possible workaround:

I have read in the past the idea of getting your own cc reader to manufacture spend. The main obstacle to this besides the possible suspicions of fraud on the part of the banks is that at 3%+- per transaction, the numbers don't make sense.

However I was thinking, what would stand in the way of coding all of the purchases as office supplies, or from telling your cc processor that your new business that you will be accepting cc's on behalf of is an office supply store. The 5x points with the ink card would seem to make it worth while. Any thoughts? I know this probably far fetched at best, but desperate times call for . . . .

Pretty sure that is fraud.

It's been said many times before that you will eventually get shut down for this (either by the credit card or the card processing company) as doing this viloates their terms and conditions and they catch on quick. On top of that, they will hold your money for a long time.

Not worth it in my opinion.

Sounds like a super duper great idea!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Open an actual office supply store.

A real small one that sells only GCs.

Sounds like you and points envy would get along real well. In Jail that is.

I've got myself Square and PayAnywhere accounts and readers (for the actual business) and nowhere did it ask me how to code the purchases... Setting up the actual terminals may be different, but I like toomanybooks suggestion better.

Price the gift cards $1 above your costs, and you could make millions. Anyone want to go into business?

I think you will make tremendous profits if you sell VR cards online.

I think the "office supply" code is something that is assigned to your business by the payment processor.
http://web.archive.org/web/200707102...cc_booklet.pdf

The MCC is assigned by the Acquiring financial institution when a supplier first begins accepting Visa payment cards. The MCC is assigned based on the supplier�s primary line of business. For example, if a supplier primarily sells computers, it may be assigned MCC 5732 �Computer Hardware�. If a supplier primarily repairs computers, it may be assigned MCC 7379 �Computer Maintenance, Repair, and Services�.

I've been doing it for 2 plus years to cash out prepaid cards. Only downside is you get a 1099-K for any number of transactions (NOT the 200/20K like paypal or Amazon), which takes some creative accounting (and explaining) to negate. My rate is 1.7% for visa and mc gift cards.

You think? I say try it - Cardinal Fang loves a good BBQ! Hold these ropes while we go find us a stake and some kindling.

With the Office Supplies coding?

So do we burn them at the stake first then jail 'em or jail 'em and then burn 'em at the stake? Never can get the order of those darn steps right.

^ What you didn't make in profit, you'd surely make up in volume. Particularly if you had an online sales store and put an add on FT...

how do you get incomm to do business with you?