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Use Serve to Cash Out Gift Cards via ATM

Whenever a store offers a bonus to buy a gift card, I take advantage of the deal. For example, I loaded up on $100 Visa gift cards with my Chase Ink Bold [1] card to earn 5% cash back and get the $500 sign up bonus.

I also buy gift cards every time I go to the grocery store on my American Express Blue Cash [2] to earn 6% cash back. As my pile of gift cards grow, I’m always looking for creative ways to cash out the gift cards.

I had a Serve [3] account sitting around from an old Free Money [4] offer, so I decided to give it a try! And it worked. Here’s more:

What is Serve?

The Serve [3] card is a prepaid card from American Express. You can fund your serve card via your bank account, credit or debit card, and my favorite: with Visa gift cards!

Access Cash. You can access the cash at ATMs. You get one free ATM withdrawal each month (it’s $2 after that). Since our ATM is fee free, I can withdraw the cash without any fees.

Combine Multiple Small Gift Cards. One of the benefits is being able to compile all of my smaller gift cards into a larger card. Because Paying Taxes with Credit Cards [5] individually is limited to just 2 transactions per quarter, I really wanted a way to combine these cards.

Serve Terms and Conditions

  • No Credit Checks.
  • No Monthly Fees.
  • No Annual Fees.

More on Serve

Load Fees. The fees to load your Serve [3] card are waived until March 15, 2013.

Monthly load limit. You can load $100 per day from a credit card or $250 per month. You can also add $1,000 per day from your bank and $200 per day with a debit card ($1,000 per month). There is a maximum of 30 loads in a month. It’s not a big limit, but it does help to compile lots of those small gift cards. Since my gift cards are classified as debit cards, it’s an easy way to transfer $1,000 per month!

Beyond Cashing Out. Obviously, the Serve [3] card wasn’t designed just for us to cash out gift cards, so be sure to use it for more than just cashing out gift cards! American Express will probably shut down the account if your only transactions are multiple loads and ATM withdrawals.

Have you used Serve to cash out gift cards?