Question
Our company does a fair bit of overseas work and we pay much of our overseas staff in cash (most of the staff are not US citizens but rather locals of whatever country we are working in. In most cases their salaries are between $800 and $1500 per month).
For some time we have discussed giving debit cards to our staff that we could load each month with their salary. Then they could spend it wherever visa is accepted, or get it in cash via ATMs. The fees would not be too important to us, since we already pay at least 2% in fees in order to transfer money abroad and get it in cash. And for us it would be better to do this rather than to handle all the cash each month. But we have still not set this up.
After reading some posts about visabuxx, gift cards, etc, I was thinking we could perhaps earn miles from this idea. This idea may also be useful for those of you who manage businesses where you need to provide people with funds for traveling or other reasons. Perhaps you could even use this in the US to pay salary if the recipient agrees.
I have sorted through some various threads on this topic but most of the threads are mainly concerned with how to convert the money back to cash at the lowest cost. In our case that is not the main concern. So I wanted to start a thread about this topic to collect all info about this model in one place.
The main questions are:
1) What banks offer a debit card that can be loaded via another card that offers miles and where the load transaction shows as a purchase rather than cash advance. (It seems in some cases this depends also on the card used to pay for the loading: in which case, the question might need to be "which combinations of cards can earn miles?").
2) Do any cards allow using American Express to fund the load? If yes this is the ideal scenario since Amex generally has much higher credit limits and our overseas salaries generally exceed $30,000 to $40,000 per month. Also, the starwood amex is a great place to earn/park miles for flexibility. Even if we cant use an Amex, we could always prepay the visa/MC used to fund the load in order to have enough funds available.
3) From the list above, do any of the cards have unreasonable restrictions on how much money can be loaded per month, or restrictions on how much can be withdrawn via ATMs per month? How about on overseas use? If you are not sure just please provide info on the cards you think might work and I will investigate this question and let you know the results.
This may be an interesting opportunity for many of us, so I will appreciate information that you can provide and I will do my best to work out a system for us...
Ron
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I doubt if you will find any credit cards / debit cards which will allow you to earn miles on ATM transactions. Forget about salaries - this would be a huge mile making opportunity if you could load your own card in to the bank, get cash back and get miles. That is not to say that small corporations should be more aggressive in paying more of their bills with credit cards versus checks.
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Two Words : PIPE DREAM
searching for a FF Nirvana, no such animal out there
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Obviously I am not sure about this (or I would be doing it instead of asking) but it appears that people are using the citibuxx to earn miles in a very similar way:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=267256
I called a few banks offering citibuxx cards and they told me that loading the teen's card using another credit card can be posted as a purchase or a cash advance... it depends on the issuing bank. As I understood this from the post above, people are doing this and earning miles.
As far as I can tell, the citibuxx program does not allow loading with Amex.
Different banks also have different policies. Bank Of American limits the load to $1000 per card per 15 days. Other banks appear to have no limits.
I asked Bank of America about the ability to use the card for an adult and they didnt really care. The reply was that there is no upper age limit on who the card can be given to.
So I think you guys are dismissing this idea a little too harshly...
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Lewinr
You have so far only received responses that are not encouraging. That may be because people have not thought it through or are not in the same position as you. Another thing to think about is how you present it to your employees. Each card is limited to $3,000 month. However, I certainly think it is possible with in limits. You have to be very careful who you ask to take their pay as a VISa buxx card. Your employees may think you are up to something illegal. One person can only have 5 cards under one account, so you can only do this for 5 employees per account.
I have a couple of employees I can approach for this, they are aware of my obsession with miles. I have not done it yet but am considering it. I don't see a downside with the right kind of employee.
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LoveToTravel, thanks for your comments.
I am sure my employees will be OK with this because for them it is more convenient. They are sometimes not happy about getting a stack of cash each month. I doubt they will see it as illegal, since they are outside of the US anyway and actually dont care.
I guess the limit is not a problem as most of them have salaries of $1000 to $2000 per month.
Are you doing anything with Visabuxx now? Which card do you use to load money and earn miles?
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I only signed up last Friday for one card and funded it with a very small amount from my USBank business account(yes, there is a USBank in my building). I asked my banker about this, they said it should be ok to fund personal visa buxx card from a business account, but when she called the corporate office they said no, it should be a personal account. I did it online anyway, am now waiting to see if the transfer will go through, I will get no miles for this one as it was funded from a bank account, but this is a test anyway and a small amount. Once I am able to withdraw cash, I will fund it with a citibank miles card and see what happens.
You may also want to take into account the foreign currency fees and the ATM fees where employees may draw cash from and make some allowances for it on the card itself. Citibank charges 3% of the transaction amount on a foreign currency transaction.
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I have recieved thousands of miles by paying our employees. We make most of our new hires through Adecco and pay for them with our MasterCard. There is no additional premium for this service.
When we first started working with them our business was only a few months old and they came back and wanted us to pay in advance, but they would take credit cards. I said that is fine, but once you put us on credit cards we will have to stay with it once we meet your credit conditions.
Unfortunately, the Adecco office in Memphis hasn't been as good as the one in Paducah. We were forced to use Accountemps for our most recent hire and they are making us mail them a check.
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Obviously I am not sure about this (or I would be doing it instead of asking) but it appears that people are using the citibuxx to earn miles in a very similar way:
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NO such thing as Citibuxx
True - but that wasn't a helpful post.
The OP obviously meant Visabuxx cards. I have had no problem loading Visabuxx cards with my MBNA Amtrak and Bank One United card.
Some notes:
- There is a fee for withdrawals from foreign ATMs
- There are some pretty low daily limits ($100 on most/all of them I think) - an employee couldn't pay a large bill with one
- You can have up to 5 cards with each issueing bank
- Some of the banks have prohibitive ATM fees even from their own ATMs
- Different Visabuxx issueing banks have different foreign transaction fees
(All 1% Visa surcharge plus X% for the bank)
- I would want to get something from writing from Visabuxx this is OK before trying to do it with a lot of employees. You wouldn't want them to lock funds. The T+C on these cards are very much in the banks favor - giving the consumer few rights. Liability for unauthorized charges, etc.
By biggest concern - doing something like this where all expendetures are internationall will make it obvious the cards are not being used as intended for teens. This could raise a red flag - and if done on a large scale - could contribute to the deal being shut down - or requiring the card recipient be a teen. Thus I hope you don't do this.
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yes, obviously I meant visabuxx.
And after investigating, I agree with the above poster: in most cases the daily limits are too restrictive to be useful.
However, when investigating I asked the agent at each bank whether they cared if the actual user of the card was a related teen or not. In all cases they said no. But probably it makes sense to check the T&C of the card to see if there are any real restrictions on age or relationship.
Another prospect that appeared interesting that appeared in another forum here is Ikobo.com. I did some investigation on that.
The good news: all money transfers are posted as purchases. The limits can easily be changed. They claim not to add any % to visa's 1% fee for foreign-currency transactions.
The bad news: their fee is 4%. This is a little too high for me. If it was 2% or even 3% I would probably use it, since that is essentially what we pay now - but not for 4%.
Another possibility appears to be cybacom.com. This does not allow you to load cards directly but they said you could use checkfree (aka Billpay) to load cards using a credit card.
Does anybody have experience with Billpay/checkfree? If you use a card to initiate a payment via their system, does it post as a purchase or cash advance? (Or does it differ depending on who the issuer of your card is?)
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This might work for you:
www.epassporte.com
It works just like paypal, however its geared towards paying staff/affiliates/resellers... you can send funds to 'staff' using your cc (just like paypal & visabuxx)... they use their ATM card to withdrawl. You can set staff up with their own account under yours etc..
No sending limits, $400/day withdrawal limit
Not sure if its up your alley, but still worth a look at..
(Note: Not much use for earning miles as their fees are high to send cash)