My favorite (discount) supermarket has closed its doors . The other discount store here only takes cash or ATM/debit cards.

Whenever possible, I charge everything to my Visa card (or Costco Amex) to earn cash back every year. Now that I can't do that at this other grocery store, I have to 1) switch most of my shopping to the higher priced store so I can use my Visa, or 2) write a check (eeww) or use a ATM/debit card and earn nothing.

Any thoughts on how I can earn a little something for all these grocery purchases? I prefer to earn $ but miles would be okay. I don't have a B of A account and don't really want to open one just for the sake of the rounding-up promotion discussed in S.P.A.M.

Thanks for any advice or pointing me to other threads discussing this (didn't find any).

So let me make sure I understand you correctly. You are a member of FT, miles are only "okay"? Are you the spawn of satan? You should banned from FT for making such a statement! (Oh, and in case it is not evident, I am kidding. I do not seriously mean it.)

There are some banks that allow you to earn miles from a debit card. With Chase you can earn miles on CO and UA with a debit card. With Citi you can earn AA miles with a debit card. With Bank of America you can earn US miles.
What is your airline/FF program of choice?

The problem with most of the debit miles/points earning cards mentioned above is that they only give you the miles/points if you put the purchase through as "credit". You need to make sure that the supermarket near you allows that, or only allows pin based transactions. Pin based = no miles or points.

This is not universally true - the Bank of America debit cards still allow mile earning on PIN-based transactions, except for ATM withdrawals, cash-back amounts on purchases, and the purchase of cash instruments (such as money orders, gaming chips, and traveler's checks).

In addition to the US card mentioned in the post by 777-DCA, BofA also has an AS debit card. Each of these earn 1 mile per $2 spent.

Mike

Most supermarkets will let you get "cash back" if you use a pin-based debit card to check out (e.g., you buy $50 worth of stuff, but they run it as a $90 charge and give you $40 cash). And most places that sell money orders will let you buy it as part of the same transaction as non-money-order transactions. For example, at the post office, you could buy a money order and a book of stamps all on one pin-based transaction.

How in the world does BofA know what portion of your transaction is for cash instruments and what portion is for other stuff?

I'm going to venture that it has something to do with how the transaction is coded by the merchant, but I really don't know. What I do know is that the restrictions I noted are straight from BofA's terms, so apparently they have a way to distinguish some types of transactions from others.

Mike

If the merchant and/or its processor do it correctly, the bank will know if there is any cash back involved, however, the bank would have no clue if the purchase is part goods, part money order.

US bank offers NWA miles with their debit card. I don't know if it works with PIN transactions, but it would be easy to check.

Yep, very easy:

Never mind, duplicate post.

Miles producing debit cards are listed in the Banking section of the Finance page of my website below.

Bank of America Debit Cards also have an annual fee, but in some states, this gets yours and your wifes cards taken care of.

Another option is if you have a Citibank checking account with ThankYou rewards. Debit card purchases each 1 TY point for every $3 for PIN transactions, 1 TY point for every $2 for signature.

Thats why I said "most".

If you have a paypal premium account (it's still free), get the Paypal debit card and use that. Not only does it pay you back 1 percent for all signature purchases, but they post the credit amount at the same time they post the transaction amount instead of waiting and sending you a check once or twice a year.