A quick word of caution if you were planning on using the Point app’s debit card to buy gift cards in the Ibotta app.
Ibotta only accepts debit cards to buy gift cards nowadays, so I was keen on testing out the Point debit card seeing as that earns 1% cashback on non-bonused spend. I was therefore really pleased when the payment went through without any issue.
As a result, I bought gift cards in the Ibotta app three days in a row with my Point debit card to kick off my five day streak to earn $30. There’s a problem with that though – gift card purchases in Ibotta don’t earn points with Point.
As you can see in the image at the top of this post, a $25 Airbnb gift card purchase should’ve earned 25 points but earned zero. That’s disappointing, but more importantly it means my purchases haven’t been counting towards my streak of five days. That’s not a huge deal as I still have time to start my five day streak and complete it before the end of the promotion date, but I’m glad I noticed now rather than later.
I reached out to Point to ask why these purchases weren’t earning points and here’s the reply I received:
It seems the type of transactions by this merchant are not rewarded with points. It is due to the MCC (Merchant Category Code), set by the merchant for business purposes. Merchant Category Codes are beyond our control and cannot be modified.
That’s a shame, but it’s fair enough because it’s much like when credit cards don’t earn bonused spend because the retailer isn’t set up with the MCC you expect them to have. Just something to bear in mind both in the future and for the current five day streak promotion.