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Is Staples No Longer Accepting Credit Cards For Visa/MC Gift Card Purchases?

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Neil, one of my friends who’s also a regular reader of the blog, has just recently gotten hooked on buying gift cards at Staples with his Chase Ink Bold card.  He wrote me an e-mail last night letting me know he had an interesting experience at Staples yesterday.

He picked up a gift card for a retail store to go along with the printer he was buying and headed to the register.  The clerk told him that he couldn’t pay for the gift card with a credit card.  When Neil pushed a bit further, the manager came out to address the issue.

According to the manager, the employee was wrong, but there was a new policy they had recently been informed of.  Only Visa and Mastercard branded gift cards had new restrictions.  Staples was no longer accepting credit cards for the purchases of these gift cards.

Cards for various retail stores, like Home Depot, Amazon and restaurants like Red Lobster and Outback are still eligible to be purchased with a credit card.

It’s worth noting that it’s not really a good value to buy Visa and Mastercard gift cards with a credit card at office supply stores.  The fee charged to purchase them usually mitigates the value of the miles.  And, Office Depot already practices a similar policy.

I’ll head out to a few local Staples stores today to see if I can find whether this is a systemwide change or not.

29 Comments

  1. I had a almost similar experience at a staples , it was for a Vanilla card only. They had them at the local store and it was cash only. The standard fixed Visa/MC was not a problem . That was about two weeks ago.

      1. It lasted about 5 minutes till I got to the check out counter. At least I get two points at supermarkets with my Amex Gold card when purchasing gift cards. Need the balance of points. Also to state the obvious , if you need appliances from lowes or home depot, i have bought gift cards at Staples then promptly go to purchase the appliances. Not an every day purchase but nice to get the points if you need the appliance.

        1. Leonard, I earned a boat load of points when I bought a freezer from Sears. Purchased the gift cards at Staples, then ordered it through a shopping portal. Was a beautiful thing!

    1. Interesting. Didn’t think it would be that specific. Would expect it to be a consistent policy across a region.

  2. Saw this post and immediately went online to purchase 5 cards. No issues encountered, order appears to have processed as normal.

  3. I bought 3 visa GCs on Sunday with my Ink Bold with no issue. And this was in NYC. Hope it’s still good in the future!

  4. I bought 8 visa gift cards at 2 Staples from Atlanta yesterday. 2 $200 VGCs for $20 rebate using Ink Bold at noon time. 6 $100 VGC using 6 different Amex cards for $20 AMEX offers at noon time and 7:00pm. No problem at all. 4 out of 7 cards are in my wife’s name. The two clerks didn’t bother to look at any of credit cards.

  5. I bought 2 Visa GC on Sunday for the promo and the cashier told me that she was not allowed to take CC for the CG purchase, but she said “the card said Chase so I thought it was a debit card” and she allowed the purchase. This was in MCO at the Staples on JYP.

  6. I purchased 2x$200 Visa GC this morning from Staples with my Fidelity Amex to take advantage of the Easy Rebate and Amex Sync offers. I had no problem using the CC for the purchase.

  7. No issues purchasing VGC in store the day before yesterday, ordered some online yesterday, had no problem paying with rewards and ink bold.

  8. Last Friday my usual staples manager let me know a $1500 cap came into effect, but nothing on CC restrictions.

    He loves the gift card sales…indicated it accounts for 30-40% of daily sales. I think he will be just as sad..

  9. They can be bought online easily or in store using credits cards. This is a false claim as confirmed by Staples. Individual stores, though, do not seem to follow a centralized policy on purchase limits.

    1. When CVS restricted payment method on VRs, they did so with new programming in their POS system. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

    2. When CVS restricted payment method on VRs, they did so with new programming in their POS system. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

    3. When CVS restricted payment method on VRs, they did so with new programming in their POS system. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

    1. I was able to buy cards in the DC area today. One mgr I spoke to said there had been discussion of limiting the amount someone could purchase on a CC, but no directive from corporate.

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