Amazon Payments to Maximize Credit Card Promotions

We have successfully used Amazon Web Payments thanks to a tip from Joshua (a reader) to transfer $2,000 from my wife's British Airways Visa Signature Credit Card to our bank account with no cost to ensure we hit the $2,500 in spending in the first month so we can earn 100,000 British Airways miles each for our upcoming transatlantic cruise/trip.

Amazon Payments appears to be a Paypal competitor that can be used to pay for Amazon (and other web sites with Amazon checkout) purchases as well as transfer money to other persons. Currently it will allow you to send someone up to $1000/mo from your credit card and the recipient can transfer the funds to there bank account for no fees. I was able to have my wife transfer $1,000 at the end of May and $1,000 in early June to me and I was able to transfer the money to our bank account within several business days with no fees.

This is pretty convenient espically for those trying to maximize a credit card promotion for rebate/reward opportunities and I'm thinking perhaps to help extract 0% on purchase offers (at least $1k/mo worth). The biggest drawback is that its limited to $1,000 per month, but given that its fee free and allows you a roughly a month long cost free loan on that $1,000, I give this technique an edge over the American Express Gift Card approach.

At this point it looks like we are set to take full advantage of this promotion and book our flights within the next few weeks - time to start researching options.

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Comments (23)

Using Amazon Web Payment, does the recipient get charged?

Posted by J | June 9, 2011 12:35 AM

Glad it worked out! Makes it super easy to hit those thresholds.

Posted by Joshua | June 9, 2011 9:00 AM

In the above approach were we transferred money from my wife's account to mine we were not charged any fees. I believe there are fees for business invoices/transactions similar to paypal.

Posted by 2million | June 9, 2011 9:42 AM

So 2 questions. Can your wife add you as a card holder and do this backwards every month as well? I am thinking this would allow us to pay our mortgage every month with our credit card technically while getting our 2% bonus from BOA. That statement was really my 2nd question

Posted by Stephen | June 12, 2011 8:52 PM

thanks for the tip regarding the amazon payment. I used this to transfer money from the credit card and added the american express gift card as a creditcard to my wifes account and cashed the money in to my bank account

Posted by jag | June 13, 2011 1:49 PM

2million, when you send $1000 from credit card via Amazon Payment to another person's Amazon Payment account, is that considered as a cash transfer by your credit card company? In other word, would credit card company charge you a fee?

Posted by Tom | June 13, 2011 2:01 PM

Could you confirm whether the Amazon web payment is consider a "cash advanced" transaction which usually carries fees and interests charge by credit card issuer?

Posted by Tom | June 13, 2011 2:11 PM

My understanding is the Amazon Payment is not considered a cash transfer based on what i have read from others, but I still need to verify with our transfer.

Posted by 2million | June 16, 2011 5:31 AM

I confirmed today via my wife's credit card statement that the Amazon payment transactions were treated as purchases.

Posted by 2million | June 16, 2011 7:54 PM

I can confirm that it goes through as a purchase. We did a 50 dollar trial that cleared before our credit card cycle ended. There was not a cash advance or transfer amount and it showed as a purchase to amazon. I finished off the 950 Extra and it should clear in our checking acct tomorrow. Once it does I am going to try and repeat this process from my wife's acct to mine. We get 2% from boa so this could be worth 40$ a month as long as there are no fees going forward.

Posted by Stephen | June 16, 2011 11:32 PM

One concern, does the "recipient" of payments get hit with tax implications for payments received as if it were income? This could trigger a sizeable bill if you did it twelve times each between you and your spouse. Only other concern, you could claim that it was not real income, but then would there not be some kind of grounds to consider this laundering or kiting of some sort? Just thought I'd ask, would love to take advantage of this but really not sure about. Planning on calling amazon to ask about if they generate a 1099 or report anything.

Posted by Guest | June 22, 2011 2:29 PM

Could this be a good way to make the 12 purchases required on some high-interest checking accounts?

Posted by Dougie Fresh | June 28, 2011 8:17 AM

If you use your Amazon Visa to fund your Amazon Payment, will you get 3% back?

That would be worth 3%*$1000 = $30 free Amazon credits per month.

Others have asked the question (on the web) but I have not yet found an answer. And I'm out of credits for this month, so no experimentation is possible :)

Posted by Dougie Fresh | July 19, 2011 6:01 PM

To answer my own questions: no, using the Amazon Visa to fund amazon payments does not result in a 3% bonus, just the usual 1%.

Also, Amazon payments makes meeting the 12 credit purchases on my high-interest gimmick checking accounts very easy, leaving my "real" purchases for regular credit cards that pay 1.2%-3% rewards.

I was beginning to go nuts trying to find 24 opportunities to make small purchases each month, so thank you Amazon!

Posted by Dougie Fresh | August 22, 2011 1:47 PM

1) I could not find the $1000/mo limit on the website. Where is it listed?
2) Also is it $1000/mo/credit card or $1000/mo across all credit cards?
3) And is a month a calendar month or date to date?

Posted by John | October 25, 2011 5:53 PM

John,

To see the limits, go to your account, edit my account settings, view my account settings. It's 1000 across all accounts. It is calendar month.

Posted by Christy | November 6, 2011 9:28 PM

Hey All, Can somebody tell me the exact steps once in amazon payments? Do you go to send money tab, I only see a place to send money to a mobile phone or email? How does amazon know to send it to my wifes bank account? I am not clear as to the steps...Thanks again! Any updates on if this is treated as income as in one of the previous posts?

Posted by Jman | January 25, 2012 8:54 PM

Hi 2million, I've also just done this with my brother, but I'm wondering if the fact that it was sent as "Purchases" would trigger any tax liabilities. Any update on this?

Posted by Mark | February 1, 2012 10:08 AM

Jman - I sent the money to my wife's email address. She had to create a separate account, add her bank account, then transfer the money out of her Amazon account. Hope that helps.

Mark - I send all mine as purchases and agree there may be some risk of potential tax liabilities. My thinking is if I ever got audited and this arose as an issue I have documentation/records that shows it was just a round trip transfer of dollars and not an actual purchase. So far it hasn't been an issue

Posted by 2million | February 1, 2012 8:30 PM

Hi 2million,
I just checked the Amazon Payments User Agreement and found they are now saying personal account can't receive the money sent by credit card.
Did you do it recently?

2.2.1 Personal Accounts. If you have an Amazon Account, we will automatically set up a Personal Account linked to your Amazon Account. Your Personal Account permits you to access the information in your Amazon Account to make purchases wherever Amazon Payments is accepted. Personal Accounts also are eligible to (a) hold balances, (b) make or send payments not only from credit cards but bank accounts or any available balance, and (c) receive payments from other users. Personal Accounts may not receive credit card payments.

5.2 Accepting Credit Cards. You must have a Business or Seller Account to receive payments funded with credit and debit cards that we accept ("Cards"),

http://www.2millionblog.com/2011/06/amazon_payments_to_maximize_credit_card_promotions_1.html

Posted by Haruka | April 10, 2012 2:00 PM

I just completed a credit card transfer and withdrew the credit card transfer to my bank account in the beginning of April 2012 so yes just recently and it worked ok for me. If there has been a change it must have just happened.

Posted by 2million | April 10, 2012 8:55 PM

Does the purchase treated as income for the recipient because it is a purchase. Therefore 1099 could hit at year end. 2M, can you confirm there is no tax hit?

Posted by bb | February 25, 2013 9:16 PM

I can confirm that Amazon Payments has not sent me a 1099 for these transactions.

Posted by 2million | March 3, 2013 9:13 PM