New Canadian Manufactured Spend Opportunity!?
Update: So I’m testing the card. When you get it, you have to do a mini application which does a soft check on your Equifax. Your initial load has to be in a foreign currency, and has a 2.5% spread. The initial load has to be the equivalent of $CAD 100. After the initial purchase, you can load the card with Canadian Dollars. The address you want the card sent to has to match the card used for the initial purchase.
CIBC recently created the “AC Conversion” pre-paid credit card. It’s a pretty standard pre-paid card, with the normal fees, and a complex forex gimmick. The card costs $5.95 to open, $3.50 ATM withdrawal fee (first withdrawal in a month is free), but most importantly, this card can be loaded with another credit credit. While I don’t have personal experience, someone on RedFlagDeals has reported that their visa did not consider the charge as a cash-like transaction… You can load a maximum of $3,000 per instance, with a maximum balance of $20,000, and a maximum $2,000 ATM withdrawal per 24-hour period.
The MS potential here is huge. Before loading huge amounts of cash, I’d wait for more reports as to whether the charge reflects as a cash-like transaction. Has anybody used the AC Conversion card yet? Any reports?
Well if you insist on posting this on the open web, you are just asking for any potential to be shut down right away…
Are you trying to kill this asap by posting this in the open?
DWTB (don’t warn the bank) please!
Seriously if this post doesn’t go down by the time I get off work today, I am removing the site from my reading list. It’s totally irresponsible for the site to have a name that suggest we should keep things quiet, then have something like this posted in the open to garner some quick & cheap page reads.
The purge has begun! 🙂
Just tried to do it. Doesn’t make much sense for MS actually… There’s too much of a purchase spread on the mandatory FX.
Did you not say in the update that only the initial load and to be a FX?
PSA – proceed at your own risk!
Loaded 2K onto the card after receiving it in the mail. CC treated it as a cash advance (no points, and interest charges!). Wanted to cut my losses by using the ATM to get cash out.
The ATM had a withdraw limit of $400…so I figured I’d just do it multiple times. At my fourth withdraw, the machine took my card (I guess it was suspicious to withdraw at that frequency). Called CIBC and they said “they’ll look into it”, and it should at least be a few days until I get my card back. So now I am stuck with $800 + the $100 USD initial load on the card that I can’t get out.
FML
MSF – thanks for the heads up. May I ask which CC did you use to load the AC Conversion Card?
Do not use this card to take out cash. If you use the card to take out cash, they will block your card if you try to take out more then 40% of your balance.
Had my card two times for this reason, and it is a pain in the rear to get them to unlock the card.
In other words if you use this card use it for POS sales only.
One time it took them 26 days to unblock the card.