![[NSW, ACT] 10% off $100 and $250 Vanilla VISA Gift Cards When You Scan Flybuys ($5.95/ $7.50 Activation Fee) @ Coles](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/06/763606.jpg?h=8e0bad9f)
10% off $100 and $250 Vanilla VISA Gift Cards when you scan flybuys @ Coles
Limit of 5 Gift Cards per Flybuys account per day. 10% discount will be applied to the value of the card including the applicable activation fee. Total cost for $100 gift card is $95.36 ($90 for card and $5.36 for activation fee) and for $250 card is $231.75 ($225 for card and $6.75 for activation fee). Offer valid only in NSW and ACT only in store at Coles Supermarkets (excludes Coles Online, Coles Express and purchases via giftcards.com.au), subject to store availability. Excludes all other States. Excludes $25, $50 and $400 Vanilla Visa Gift Cards. To qualify for this offer you must present your Flybuys card at the time of purchase. While stocks last, no rainchecks. Vanilla Visa Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase any other gift card sold at Coles. Offer valid from 22/3/23 to 28/3/23. Refer to individual gift card for terms and conditions. Flybuys' privacy policy applies. Standard Flybuys terms and conditions apply and are available at Flybuys.com.au. Vanilla Visa gift cards are issued by Heritage and People's Choice Limited trading as Heritage Bank ABN 11 087 651 125 AFSL 244310 pursuant to a license from Visa Worldwide Pte Limited.
- $100 gift card = $95.36 ($90 for the card and $5.36 for activation) = 4.64%.
- $250 gift card = $231.75 ($225 for the card and $6.75 for activation) = 7.3%.
I was not expecting this deal to be back again so soon!
Time to roll out the periodic reminder for those not as familiar with the Vanilla Visa gift cards…
These prepaid gift cards have no PIN associated with them.
These prepaid gift cards do not come with a PIN at all when they are manufactured, and it is not possible to set a PIN after activation for card-present (i.e. in-person) purchases.
If you are going to use this prepaid gift card in person, you will likely need to sign to “verify” the transaction. If you swipe the prepaid gift card on the EFTPOS terminal are asked to enter a PIN, press the Enter / OK / green key without entering anything, or press the Signature option on the screen (if that appears as an option).
Although signature verification was phased out for Australian-issued debit and credit cards in late 2014, there still some circumstances where signature verification is still permitted in Australia, including magnetic stripe payments (which covers Vanilla Visa gift cards).
However, if you are at a merchant that mandates you provide a PIN to authorise an in-person transaction, you will not be able to use this prepaid gift card.
These prepaid gift cards are not accepted at some online merchants
Merchants that do not accept these prepaid gift cards include Prezzee, Reward Gateway and the Woolworths Group gift card portal.
This is due to prepaid gift cards not being tied to a specific person and lacking the security features that allow a payment processor to ask for verification (e.g. a two-factor authentication code sent to a mobile or obtained from a token to check whether the verified cardholder is the person trying to initiate the payment).
A workaround is to link these prepaid gift cards to a PayPal account, then use PayPal at an online merchant (where PayPal is accepted) and select the prepaid gift card as the payment source. I have done this many times at Prezzee and the Woolworths Group gift card portal to get around their restrictions on prepaid gift cards.
Before anyone asks, these gift cards should be okay to use to to send payments to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) online. (I last used a Vanilla Visa gift card to on the ATO portal at the end of 2022.) These prepaid gift cards attract a 0.4% payment surcharge and ATO’s systems will only permit you to redeem ten different prepaid gift cards in a 12-24 hour period (five via myGov and five via Government EasyPay, so remember to factor this in when planning to send any payments.
These prepaid gift cards are (particularly) susceptible to BIN attacks (aka “hacks”)
Although any Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/etc card is susceptible to bank identification number (BIN) attacks (where someone tests multiple potential combinations of card numbers, expiry dates and CVV2 values), prepaid gift cards are particularly susceptible, due to a limited pool of potential expiry dates, as well as the lack of sophisticated fraud prevention and fraud detection systems you usually find implemented at “regular” financial institutions (e.g. CommBank, Westpac, AMEX).
If you notice someone manages to redeem part or all of the balance of your prepaid gift card, you can dispute transactions with the issuer (Heritage Bank).
You may have up to 120% of a transaction value deducted from your prepaid gift card
Some merchants will request a pre-authorisation amount that is up to 120% of the transaction value. However, when the transaction is no longer pending, the amount deducted from your prepaid gift card will be settled at the transaction amount, and the additional funds set aside to cover the pre-authorisation amount will be returned the available balance.
I have noticed this happen at hairdressers and restaurants, and the terms and conditions also mention this potentially happening at hotels, rental car place, etc.
This means that you may not be able to redeem your prepaid gift card at some merchants, even though you think it has a sufficient available balance. For example, I once tried to use a Vanilla Visa gift card with $34 on it to pay for a $30 meal at a restaurant, but the card kept on being declined. The card issuer later told me it was due to the restaurant wanting to use $36 as the pre-authorisation amount (not $30), so my transactions were being declined due to insufficient available balance.
Thanks!
Can you add money to PayPal balance from these cards?
No, but you can add them to your cards in PayPal so they can be used for payment.
Trying to think of better ways to 'secure' the money since these cards are easy to hack, as I don't have big bills to pay right now.
How about BPay to a credit card?
u can make a 2nd account and then bill the other, but you'll lose the transaction fee
@billsa: Would you mind please explaining this method?
I'm eager to find a way to transfer the credit from a prepaid debit card (either one of these retailer-bought ones, or my own that is not linked with a bank account with traditional BSB / account #) into another deposit type, if at all possible.
I've been looking into Paypal or money orders so far, but can't yet understand if it's allowed..
@muwu: First of all, you have to have 2 PayPal accounts.
You can transfer money from one PayPal account to another by clicking on the “Send Money” button in PayPal and entering the details of your other account (mobile# or email). After that, you can enter the amount you want to send and add the card details. PayPal will then tell you the fee, which varies depending on the amount, but in this case is about 2.7%. Finally, you can send your money.
after all that you'll still be making a 7% profit
@billsa: not making 7% since there is an activation fee $5.95/$7.5.
@jowu15: For the $250 card, we'd pay $225 for the card, $6.75 for activation, and $6.8 for Paypal transfer fee. So $238.55 for $250 value is %4.58 saving
@billsa: Thanks for this, works great for the $100 prepaid Mastercards (bought a heap of them before knowing about this better upcoming Vanilla Visa deal). $97.17 after the $2.83 fee, so still a small profit for each card. Was considering trying to buy some $100 Vanilla Visas with them but cba now, prefer this method to clear them.
@billsa: @billsa @MicOzB - tried 2 transactions for PayPal. 1st went through on one card, the 2nd didn't go through. Called customer support and they said they're detecting it as a 'funds transfer' and not a legitimate purchase of goods. Pretty impressed with the systems they've got it place. TBH, it was easier to detect since I was a recurring payment back to back.
@muwu: If you don't mind setting it up, Square charges 2.2% if you did it online (without purchasing hardware).
@frugalftw: I got banned from Square for doing that
If add to Paypal, what happens if the transaction amount exceed the balance in this card?
Does it take the balance, and then proceed to the next card/account?
@auri: Haven't tried, but I'd say the transaction just wouldn't go through. I know that you can use a PayPal balance + a card for a single transaction (PayPal balance is used first though).
@MiscOzB: One way you could go about is to buy your own eBay listed item. Wait until eBay has those $0 fee deal
News - People still spending.
Rba - ok, another 0.25% up
😅
What a comprehensive write-up, thank you @WookieMonster
I was wondering when they were going to redo this promo considering it was cancelled last month.
@WookieMonster - can this card be used at Coles & Woolies grocery in-store shopping?
I originally addressed your question in an older version of the pinned comment, so I probably should not have removed it!
Coles
This should be okay to redeem for grocery purchases instore, but there are two scenarios to be aware of:
If you are redeeming below a certain amount ($35, I think), as soon as you swipe the gift card on the EFTPOS terminal, the checkout will immediately attempt to redeem payment without requiring authorisation.
If you are redeeming above the aforementioned amount, as soon as you swipe the gift card on the EFTPOS terminal, you will be asked to enter the PIN. If you press Enter on the EFTPOS terminal without entering any numbers, the checkout will attempt signature verification. The checkout will print out a small slip of paper, upon which you need to provide a signature. The checkout attendant will need to review the signature and determine whether to accept or decline the signature. Staff are supposed to review the signature on the back of the gift card as well so that it matches what was provided on the slip of paper, and some staff go a step further and also ask you to show ID so they can see whether the signature on that matches the ones on the gift card and the paper. In other words, the redemption of the gift card completely depends on whether the staff member accepts or declines authorisation.
Woolworths / Woolworths Metro
This should be okay to redeem for grocery purchases instore.
If you are redeeming below a certain amount ($1 or $2, I think… from experience, it is really low), as soon as you swipe the gift card on the EFTPOS terminal, the checkout will immediately attempt to redeem payment without requiring authorisation.
If you are redeeming above the aforementioned amount, as soon as you swipe the gift card on the EFTPOS terminal, you will be asked to enter the PIN. If you press Enter on the EFTPOS terminal without entering any numbers, the checkout should immediately attempt to redeem funds from the gift card. In other words, Woolworths’ checkouts should attempt to do a signature verification without ever asking you to provide for a signature. Having said that, I did say earlier today that it has been a while since I last tried to redeem a Vanilla Visa gift card at Woolworths, and I did spot someone recently being asked to provide a signature and requiring a staff member to review it…
Just in case you were not aware, the above advice only applies to purchases. If you ever try to do a refund transaction at Coles or Woolworths (or really any merchant) with a Vanilla Visa gift card, authorisation is always required, no matter how small the refund amount is. This means that as soon as you swipe the gift card on the EFTPOS terminal, you will always see a PIN prompt screen, and…
At Coles, that means you will need to provide a signature.
At Woolworths, that means you should be able to authorise the transaction without having to actually provide a signature.
WookieMonster. Thanks so much as always for your clear, consistent advice on this site on gift cards. I always appreciate reading/re-reading through it for clarification.
Could I ask your advice on how you deal with leftover small balances on lots of cards? Eg. for this deal, I could only find $100 Vanilla Visa cards in-store today. I paid in 5 individual transactions at a self-service checkout, each with $100 Coles-Myer cards, so now have 5 CM cards with <$5 on them!
In hindsight perhaps I should have gone for a serviced checkout, doing one transaction, and hoped they would allow split payment over 5 cards. Meaning only 1 would have money left at the end. It was busy and I was concerned about the staff member declining.
To be honest my head is spinning today with the amount of gift card deals I've been taking up of late. Sometimes I wonder if all my work to save little bits of money and/or get bonus points is worth the time and effort!
No worries!
I usually use up small balances on a future shop, especially at a business that permits split payments. Personally, I usually use them at Coles or Woolworths self checkouts when purchasing groceries, as you are not typically bothering a staff member when you spend an extra minute or two redeeming multiple gift cards with small balances. You could easily do this as well at BIG W, Target, Kmart, etc. I also sometimes top up a public transport card using prepaid gift cards with small balances, or I use them to pay for parking (especially when I only need to pay $2 or $3 for parking at a shopping centre).
Hmmm I would generally not try to do split payments across 5 cards (especially gift cards) at a standard checkout, as that can get a bit dicey.
One time, I redeemed 13 cards and gift cards in one transaction at a Coles standard checkout. (To be fair, there were no self checkouts open.) The checkout person was actually completely fine with it, but the customer next in the queue had a large trolley full of groceries and was not thrilled about me taking so long to pay (and that is putting it mildly…).
The staff member may react badly if you use a gift card to pay for a gift card, as you are not actually supposed to use a gift card from Coles Group to pay for a gift card.
Yeah… I get you. I mean, I have to carry around a second wallet just to store my physical gift cards lol.
If you have a specific reason to load up on prepaid gift cards (e.g. paying off a huge tax debt, paying off heath insurance bills or utility bills or rates or insurance, you want a way to reduce general expenses by a little bit) and you do not mind the extra hassle, I think it makes sense. It may seem like a little saving now, but it adds up over time.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Thanks so much for your reply Wookie. Helped reassure me that I'm not crazy and not the only one doing all these gift card shenanigans!! It's particularly useful to know that split payments of multiple small amounts can be done at Target, Kmart etc. I hadn't thought of this and will likely be the way I'll use up my current stash of small amounts.
I turn my remaining visa/MC card balances to Amazon credit, by buying Amazon gift cards online using the remaining balance.
Thanks for all the details!
Can you also use Coles gift cards to buy these Vanilla Visa cards?
I know Coles gift cards can be used to purchase Coles Mastercard (purple or yellow ones) but you have to pay the full amount on the Coles gift card (can't do split payments).
TIA
It worked for me yesterday! As I described above - yesterday I used $100 Coles-Myer GCs to pay for $100 Vanilla Visas on individual transactions (leaving a small amount on the GCs due to the discount :-)). I did this at the self-service checkout without any issues. And yes it's my understanding you can't do split payments, although have seen a couple of comments suggesting otherwise (eg. put cash in first, then can use multiple cards?).