Hi all
I’ve never got into card churning for points but knowing I need to do some travel next year I have just got a Westpac Altitude Qantas Mastercard.
I need to spend $4000 to get the bonus sign up points.
As a fairly frugal single person I really don’t know how to hit this - I don’t need any big ticket items at the moment
Can I just buy $4000 worth of Coles and Woolworths gift cards to use on my groceries over the next 12 months or will they somehow know that? And is it even a ineligible purchase
I just am not sure what “cash equivalent transaction” means in the following terms and conditions;
“ †Eligible purchases do not include interest, fees and charges, cash or ATM cash advances, cash equivalent transactions, gambling transactions, a purchase from or payment to a local, state or federal government or government related agency, BPAY or similar transactions (such as Post Billpay), refunds and balance transfers debited from the card account.”
Thanks for any help
Cheers
It depends on the merchant. For Coles and Woolworths, it should be eligible.
Your financial institution won’t know what exactly you have purchased (unless you send them a copy of the purchase receipt). They’ll only get basic information from Coles or Woolworths (e.g. the amount you spent, the merchant category code (MCC), merchant name, store location). Coles’ or Woolworths’ MCC will be for a supermarket (which should be 5411), because the MCC reports the type of business you’re at. The MCC does not change for whether you’re purchasing fruit or cleaning products or a gift card1, so it will appear to your financial institution that you’re spending heaps of money at a supermarket. As long as the credit card sign-up offer does not exclude supermarkets, you will be fine.
I met my last credit card sign-up offer almost exclusively by purchasing gift cards through Coles and Woolworths.
If you were purchasing gift cards through a merchant type listed as an exclusion in the terms and conditions (e.g. Australia Post), you’d run into issues. Australia Post sell gift cards in their physical stores and online, but Australia Post is most likely classified as a government agency. Considering any spend at government agencies is almost always excluded from credit card sign-up offers, purchasing gift cards through Australia Post is a bad idea.
As a side note, if you ever wondered how the Woolworths Group gift card portal (the section of the Woolworths website where you can purchase gift cards is classified, it is also classified as a supermarket.
The MCC will only change at Coles or Woolworths if you’re doing an EFTPOS cashout in the same transaction as purchasing a gift card (i.e. withdrawing cash from a bank account at a Coles or Woolworths checkout via a card operating on the EFTPOS network). Cashout is not possible over card networks besides the EFTPOS network, so it is a moot point for this discussion regarding credit cards. ↩