(EXPIRED) USPS: Buy $50 Or $100 Mastercard Gift Card & Save $2 On Activation Fee (Stack With Amex Business Platinum?)

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The Deal

Buy $50 or $100 Mastercard gift cards at the Post Office & save $2 off the activation fee.

Key Terms

Expires September 18, 2020.
Excludes variable load Mastercard gift cards.

Tips & Ideas

File this under something I didn’t realize seeing as I rarely mail anything, but the United States Postal Service is now selling gift cards. They’re currently offering $2 off the activation fees when buying $50 or $100 Mastercard gift cards which still isn’t a great deal seeing as you’ll still be paying activation fees of $2.95 and $3.95 respectively, assuming that the $50 and $100 cards have fees of $4.95 and $5.95 normally.

What makes this is a little more interesting is that you can presumably pay for these with an American Express Business Platinum card in order to take advantage of the $20 shipping credit that’s available through the end of the year. If you can, that means you can buy a $100 Mastercard gift card for a net cost of $83.95, thereby making a profit of $16.05. Some people might still prefer to go down the route of buying $20 of Forever stamps, but it you don’t send all that much mail, this is a great alternative.

I’m not sure if every Post Office sells gift cards or only select locations, so this might be YMMV. The Post Office I just went to also had a third party gift card rack containing gift cards for brands like Amazon, Best Buy, Uber, etc., so those could be a good alternative for the $20 shipping credit on the Amex Business Platinum.

Some Chase cards are also currently earning 5x points on shipping and advertising purchases on up to $10,000 of spend through October 31, 2020. I have that offer on my Chase Ink Plus card, so that’s another option for racking up some 5x spend on gift cards seeing as Office Depot/OfficeMax and Staples don’t usually sell Best Buy gift cards.

Update: Apparently Post Offices that sell gift cards might be hard-coded to only accept debit cards. If so, the Amex Business Platinum and Chase cards options wouldn’t be possible, but some brands might still be useful on the PayPal Business Debit Mastercard seeing as that offers 2% cashback.