Anyone paid Federal Tax with store-bought Incomm VGC for full $500? Worried if it lock the card up.

You can call them and ask for a replacement. I recently did it for 3 cards with similar issue and the replacements came within a week.

I have several Visa 435880 BHN $200 GCs from OD, both yellow and gray. Today, I used one to add $199 to my ONE card via WM MC. It did not go through with a full $200 swipe, but I used the same card for the $199 swipe. I previously registered the GC online via giftcards.com and added a PIN.

Please note, this thread was created to discuss InComm cards. BHN has it's own "breakdown" thread.

New Issue with Incomm at WMSC
 

Tried to buy Vanilla Vani's today at 2 different WM-SC and one WM-NM via SCO. This is a standard way for me to drain problematic BHN's as SCO allows 6 swipes @ <= $99.

Both WM-SC failed right at the end, all swiped cards refunded, InComm failed to activate.
At the Second WM-SC, the employee working SCO told me it's a new policy. No more VGC at SCO and I'd need to go to the register.

The WM-NM SCO worked BAU, for now.

I thought Pathward and BHN were the same.

LOL. Read a lot more. Pathward is a bank. The other main bank is Sutton. You'll see Metabank sometimes, but they changed their name to Pathward literally because Zuckerburg paid them to do it when he changed Facebook to Meta. There's a few other banks seen here and there including Sunrise and USBank that back these gift cards.

BHN is processor. They handle the network, not the banking. The other processor is Incomm. Generally the bank matters a lot less than the processor, but Incomm/Sutton has been the least problematic. Still, other things matter including the channel where the card is distributed. e.g. I have yet to see a single DP of an Incomm bought online locking up, but Incomm's bought at brick and morter have been problematic since the 2023 Holiday season. As for BHN, there are differences between the "plain" VGC and MCGC bought at ODOM vs. Staples. Search for posts from me with the word "experiments" in the title to see what I uncovered. Beyond that, there are differences between the "plain" vgc vs the 5Backs and Everywheres.

Read up and learn my friend.

Auto drain small amounts at WM?
 

Just started having issues in my area with $200 MGC - mostly work if I buy MO under $190. Haven’t found exact limit yet. In any case I’m left with a bunch of cards with about $10 each. My recollection is that WM SCO doesn’t auto drain. And even if I’m able to input exact amount there’s likely a swipe limit (4 cards?).

Looking for any advice or DPs.

And the reason I’m thinking WM is I figure that’s it’s a location where I:

1) regularly shop
2) don’t have any CC that give me a multiplier like a 3x grocery - other than a 2% card
3) can’t buy highly discounted GCs to shop there as I can for many other retailers

I have noticed that at SCO, WM now autodrains your card for partial balances. I suspect that the usual rules apply with max of 4 swipes, but have never tried more than two cards to accomplish full payment..

Unfortunately, some DPs still indicate a no go on partial drain unless you know the exact balance of the card being used :(

So your DP will be helpful

You can use 8 debit cards with the partial payment method in the self checkout. If you have a balance remaining, you have to use a credit card to pay the final amount.

Interesting new behavior I encountered for Vanillas. They now auto-flag themselves for replacement if you swipe too many times and fail, which means easy replacement and outsourced brain dead phone rep in India doesn’t attempt to stop you. SecureSpend however is same as before, they want to send it to some ........ “backend team” (why does any firm think it makes one iota of difference how their internal structure is setup? Especially when they use it as excuse against you?)

I've found the limit to be 6 in my local WM

In LAS, bought several Vanilla/SecureSpend, not going through at Walmart/Neighborhood Markets. Called up InComm and they suggested waiting 2 hrs after purchase to use. Is this new? Not just 1 he anymore?

The automated system will tell you when cards will be active. Two hours would be new, but it has always been store (and maybe region?) depended.

In the end, after visiting 8 WMs of various types, nothing has worked no matter how many hours it’s been. Then I remembered reading regionally many WMs in Vegas are hard coded like this, it’s a disturbing glimpse into the future when WM may decide to implement this across the country.

What bothered me was how some stores show a straight decline that you can see on the InComm website, others the card auto-rejects like the way MCGCs are sometimes auto-rejected with no opportunity to input anything. Now I have to lug all these VGCs home…