Confirmed: PayPal My Cash limits now based on calendar month

Long-time readers and blog subscribers know that I've been following with interest the irregularities that occurred last month with PayPal My Cash load limits. The My Cash website has long claimed that the $4,000 monthly load limit was based on the calendar month, but experience proved otherwise: in fact the $4,000 limit reset on a rolling, 30-day cycle, which required a certain amount of vigilance to stay on top of (I used a Google calendar).

Early last month, the My Cash website started generating errors, the most significant of which was that load limits completely refused to reset; users who had some available load space at the time of the error were allowed to use it up, but older transactions didn't "roll off" as they had so far. Finally, towards the end of July load limits were reset in a pattern that suggested the monthly load limits would now, finally be based on the calendar month.

And sure enough, my load limits on my personal and business PayPal accounts reset today with a full, $4,000 ceiling.

Conclusion

For now, it appears that PayPal My Cash monthly load limits reset on the 1st of each month. This should make it easier to plan loads, and reduce the anxiety of watching the calendar in order to load PayPal accounts on the exact day each older load rolls off.

At least until PayPal and Incomm come up with something new to throw at us!

Reminder: AAA still sells Visa gift cards

[Note to readers: I have an old friend visiting town starting tomorrow so this may be the last full post for the week, unless I find some downtime and inspiration in between our adventures. Next week I'm traveling to the Western Montana Fair, where I will hopefully be able to get a few blog posts up in between trips to the rodeo. And no, I'm not competing.]

Last year there was a flurry of excitement on FlyerTalk when, as a holiday promotion, AAA branches in some parts of the country began selling PIN-enabled Visa gift cards with no processing fee. It was possible to use a credit card for the purchase, earn points, and pay only the cost of liquidating the gift cards. Once the promotion ended, folks realized that even with the processing fee, those gift cards may still be worth buying under certain circumstances.

Not all AAA locations sell Visa gift cards

I discovered once I returned from Chicago, where I was able to buy fee-free Visa gift cards over the holidays, to New England, that the AAA of Southern New England did not sell Visa gift cards at all; they have an exclusive relationship with American Express, whose gift cards, not being PIN-enabled, were useless to me.

Here in the Midwest, I found my local AAA branch to be well-stocked with Visa gift cards and more than happy to sell them to me by credit card. The cards cost $3 each, can be loaded with up to $500 each, and there is no discount for buying the cards in bulk.

AAA Visa gift cards are registered in the office

Unlike other brands of prepaid Visa debit cards, like OneVanilla cards, which allow but don't require you to register a ZIP code online, each AAA Visa gift card is registered to you (or perhaps, theoretically, another person) in-store at the time of purchase.

Once your card is activated in-store, you can call in to set your PIN number by following the telephone prompts.

There are unpublished limits on purchases

Since these cards are registered to the purchaser immediately, it's easy for Metabank, the issuer of the cards, to track purchase and unloading activity down to the dollar.

Unfortunately, that appears to be exactly what they do.

Back in November and December, when the deal first broke, the usual suspects went big, buying tens – or perhaps hundreds – of thousands of dollars in gift cards and unloading them as quickly as possible. Once such unusual activity was detected, Metabank froze their remaining gift cards and I believe insisted on mailing them refund checks.

Further attempts by those customers to buy gift cards at AAA were refused, either by managers or by the sales system itself.

During that promotion, I bought just $2,000 in gift cards and immediately liquidated them. I never heard anything from AAA or Metabank, but also didn't attempt to buy any more once the promotion ended since they weren't available locally.

For more information on these unpublished limits, you'll need to dig into the relevant FlyerTalk thread. Further, the usual caveats apply when using Citi credit cards for these purchases. There's at least one report of AAA gift card purchases being treated as a cash advance.

Conclusion

I don't consider AAA gift cards to be a highly scalable technique for manufacturing spend, but it is one that is still viable under some circumstances, and I wanted to remind my readers it exists.

Update: Suntrust lets me make next-day transfers

Earlier this month I mentioned in passing that ACH pulls to my Suntrust checking account invariably took 3 business days to process, unlike the next day transfers I was able to request with my Bank of America checking account.

I assumed that was a deliberate choice Suntrust made, perhaps because next-day ACH transfers are more expensive, or perhaps simply because the Automated Clearing House makes the funds available to them immediately and they prefer to hold them for a few days before releasing them to clients.

Lo and behold, I logged into my Suntrust account today to transfer some money in from my local, money-order-friendly credit union and found that a new option had appeared: free next-day transfers!

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Why me? Why now?

I asked on Twitter whether anyone else noticed the new external transfer option appear recently, and heard from one reader who had been using it for some time and one who still didn't have it.

My best guess at this point for what triggered its appearance on my account is simply the passage of time. I initiated the process of opening my account in early April, and had my first account activity on May 5 (it took me a long time to receive all my credentials). That gives a timeframe of 2.5 to 3.5 months months before next day transfers became available for me, depending on when the clock started.

The other alternative is that Suntrust has a risk model that combines age of account with other factors: number of transactions, average daily balances, or others.

Are there limits?

I'm not embarrassed in the slightest to say that I have so far pushed far less money monthly through my Suntrust account than other players; the only absolutely essential thing in this game is to know the limits of your own comfort, and I'm very, very comfortable with mine.

However, an additional limit to the amount of spend I could put on the Suntrust card each month was that 3-business-day waiting period between initiating a transfer and the funds becoming available. Next day transfers mean there are fewer tradeoffs between Suntrust spend and transactions made through other sources (since less money is ever held out of play in ACH Limbo).

On the other hand, while Bank of America clearly publishes the limits for 3-day and next-day external transfers, Suntrust does not appear to (although I'd be happy to be corrected in the comments). That doesn't mean such limits don't exist but rather that, if they do, additional experimentation is required to discover them.

Conclusion

Of course, this post is only relevant to those readers who listened to my exhortations to apply for a Suntrust Delta Skymiles Check Card before they stopped accepting applications. For those of you who did, congratulations, and as your account ages watch for the appearance of online, next-day transfers.

Additional datapoints are, as always, welcome in the comments. See you there!

Update: permanent PayPower cards and REloadit

Last month I reported on two potentially useful tools for manufacturing spend at grocery stores: PayPower cards and REloadit packs.

Now that I've had more time to experiment with both, I can share my update.

PayPower's website doesn't work very well

In addition to a prepaid debit card (with a steep $5.95 monthly fee which, unlike the T-Mobile Visa Prepaid Card's, can't be waived – but more on that below), a permanent PayPower account also includes a rudimentary bill pay feature similar to that offered by some smaller, regional banks and credit unions. Rather than having billers pre-loaded or searchable, you need to type in your biller's payment details, which are then cross-referenced with their database to see if the payment can be made electronically or if it requires a paper check to be mailed.

The website doesn't work very well, and saved payees periodically disappear before unexpectedly reappearing days or weeks later. At other times the bill payment page completely fails to load. I suspect this is an issue with how PayPower interacts with their 3rd-party bill payment service, and it's something you should certainly be aware of.

Online bill payments are possible, however

I have been able to make online payments to my Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard using the payment details on my statement (the "Card Services" address in Philadelphia). Since PayPower required the same information as my credit union to add a biller, I suspect they may use the same 3rd-party service provider. I've now made two bill payments and both were received by Barclaycard in 2 business days, indicating the payments are being made electronically.

There is a substantial shutdown risk

There are many reports of shutdowns in the FlyerTalk thread on PayPower accounts and the co-branded T-Mobile Visa Prepaid card, which has all the same functionality as PayPower and is also administered by Blackhawk Network. Particular flags seem to be large online bill payments and heavy unloading activity at Walmart. This is not surprising: we want our money back as quickly as possible, while they want to hold onto our money as long as possible.

The difference is that when they don't get what they want, they take their toys and go home.

The monthly fee may be avoidable

I can't seem to find any similar reports, but by keeping the balance in my PayPower account at $0, I have not been charged a monthly fee yet. In other words, they don't charge the monthly fee against an account with insufficient funds to pay it. It's unclear to me whether my approach is sustainable or if my account will quickly be flagged for closure.

Conclusion

For now, my account is still active, but I plan to use it very lightly, for 2-4 bill payments per month. The ability to buy REloadit cards for $3.95 in the powerful bonus category of grocery stores is a tempting enough opportunity to keep me coming back once a week or so. I will be immediately emptying the account, however, and won't be surprised when my account is ultimately closed.

I'd love to know: what experiences with PayPower (and T-Mobile) have my readers had? See you in the comments.

Why I'll be loading Serve at Family Dollar (for now)

If you've been following the relevant thread on FlyerTalk or received one of the seemingly targeted e-mails from American Express (I haven't received one yet), you know that American Express has entered into a partnership with the Family Dollar discount store chain to allow Serve accounts to be loaded with cash or debit cards at Family Dollar registers.

How it works

The stars finally aligned today and I made my way to a nearby Family Dollar (after popping into Walgreens to pick up a Vanilla prepaid debit card).

The cashier and manager hanging out by the front door were easily the two nicest minimum wage employees I've met (note to Walmart!), and while they naturally hadn't heard of any e-mail, memo, change, or even Serve itself, they were totally game to play around with it for me.

I grabbed one of the famously mysterious "fake" Vanilla Reload Network cards from the prepaid card rack (where, intriguingly, I also saw OneVanilla cards hanging) and walked it up to the counter. The cashier scanned the bar code on the reverse side, entered $500, and I was prompted to swipe my Serve card. The register then showed a total amount due of $500 (not, importantly, $503.95).

I swiped my freshly acquired Vanilla prepaid debit card, entered any PIN I liked, and the register reported success. A few moments later I received the standard e-mail from American Express indicating the load was successful, and it was immediately reflected in my online balance.

Why it matters

Reading this blog post you may well be saying to yourself that you can't imagine any reason you would ever load a Serve card at Family Dollar. And you might be right!

But part of being the most effective travel hacker you can be is knowing all the opportunities available out there, so you should at least be aware of this opportunity.

Personally, I will be loading up my Serve card at Family Dollar for as long as this opportunity lasts, for the simple reason that I'm a busy guy, and my visits to Walmart are particularly busy. I already have too many things to take card of on each visit there, so the ability to displace some of my Walmart loading activity to another (incidentally, closer and more convenient) store location is a big win in my book.

You may or may not find that to be the case in your own miles and points strategy and in your own geographic location. But if, for example, you've been lamenting the end of OneVanilla cards' debit functionality at Walmart, perhaps because you have a particularly lucrative card for drug store spend, you might want to hop onto your preferred mapping service and see if you have a Family Dollar store near you.

REloadit report: opportunities and pitfalls

Since CVS stopped allowing Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to be purchased using credit cards, many people naturally turned to competing reload products. After Green Dot's MoneyPak reload product, one of the most prominent is REloadit, a product of Blackhawk Network (rather than Incomm, the producer of Vanilla-branded prepaid products) sold at many grocery stores nationwide.

I wrote about REloadit back in May, in the context of manufacturing spend at low or no cost using T-Mobile prepaid debit cards which, when loaded using REloadit cards, refund the $3.95 purchase fee to your card's balance.

Since writing that post, I've started experimenting with REloadit cards and have some very curious datapoints to report.

REloadit-compatible prepaid debit cards

You can find REloadit-compatible cards on this site. Besides the T-Mobile card mentioned above, the two most important ones to note are PayPower (since you might be accumulating a growing stack of unregistered temporary cards already) and Serve, the now-slightly-superior-to-Bluebird checking account alternative by American Express.

REloadit packs come in different designs

Last year I wrote about the the plethora of Vanilla Reload Network reload card designs and the opportunities each redesign promised.

REloadit packs come in at least four designs, and each design is sold by a different grocery store chain near me. I don't have pictures of the fourth design, but I do of the three designs I've personally experimented with.

Here's a REloadit "classic:"

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Here's what I think of as a "second-generation" REloadit pack (I'll explain why in a moment):

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And finally, here's REloadit 3.0 (now rebranded to "Reloadit"):

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I bought all three of these cards within the span of a week. So why did I put them in this order?

The "third-generation" Reloadit card comes last because it's the current branding of their website. The distinction between REloadit classic and second-generation REloadit cards is more important, however.

First- and second-generation REloadit cards have different functionality

If you've experimented at all with Evolve Money, the free online bill payment service, you've no doubt wondered what exactly they mean when they say you can pay your bills with "cash" online.

It turns out they give two options: something called Evolve Pay Bucks which – to the best of my knowledge – no one has ever seen in the wild, and REloadit cards.

Unlike the many Vanilla Reload redesigns over the lifetime of that technique, and as strange as it sounds, first-generation REloadit cards do not work with Evolve Money.

What if you accidentally bought a handful of first-generation REloadit packs?

Needless to say, when I discovered this today, I was more than a little peeved. I had already successfully experimented with third-generation REloadit (or "Reloadit") packs using Evolve Money, so had purchased a few REloadit cards with precisely that purpose in mind.

After Evolve Money returned a not-particularly-helpful error advising me to call Blackhawk directly, I was eventually able to reach a customer service representative (try entering 16 0's when prompted for a card number) who both assured me the funds on the card were available for loading and that she had never heard of Evolve Money or any other REloadit-compatible bill payment service, other than PayPower.

Fortunately, I do have access to PayPower cards, so I registered one of my temporary cards and quickly loaded it up with over $1,000 in REloadit packs on my way out the door to Walmart, keeping in mind that PayPower charges its steep $5.95 monthly fee within a week of purchasing the card, and not wanting to pay that fee for access to my own money.

If it were July already, I would have attempted to load the funds to my Serve account, but I was already more than a little worried that my money had been claimed by marauding prepaid pirates, so I seized the opportunity to load the funds while I could.

Conclusion: and PayPower shut me down

When I got home, my access to my PayPower online account had already been revoked, so I assume my same-day loading and unloading activity resulted in my account being shut down.

Since I got my money out and won some hard-earned datapoints for my readers, I'm perfectly satisfied with the experience. And of course, once I'm able to experiment with loading my Serve and T-Mobile accounts with REloadit packs, I'll have more to report.

Are you watching for PayPower prepaid debit cards?

Longtime readers know that back in New England, I had more or less constant problems manufacturing spend in two of my favorite bonus categories: gas stations and grocery stores. A few days or weeks after discovering a source, it would inevitably dry up, never to be replaced, or a memo would come down from management requiring cash for the purchases I was interested in making.

Since moving to the Midwest, I've been surprised daily by the options available in virtually every store here. One option I've only recently had a chance to experiment with are PayPower "reloadable" prepaid debit cards.

Are they free or are they cheap?

PayPower cards got some publicity recently when in many markets they went "fee-free;" that is to say, rather than their old $3.95 purchase fee, or the $4.95 activation fee of OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, or the $5.95 purchase fee of many PIN-enabled grocery store gift cards, the PayPower cards stopped charging any activation fee at all at purchase. Within about a week of activation, however, their monthly maintenance fee of $5.95 is still charged, so it's important to liquidate these cards as soon as possible.

In my market, the cards still come with a $3.95 activation fee. While not free, they do allow me to take advantage of grocery store bonus categories while paying less than I was at CVS for PIN-enabled OneVanilla cards.

Set your PIN – but don't register!

In theory, the cards you buy at your local grocery store are only temporary cards, meant to be replaced by a permanent card once you register your temporary card.

It turns out, however, that the PayPower phone tree allows you to set a PIN for your temporary card without providing any personal identifying information.

Just call the number on the front of your card, wait for the prompt, enter your card number followed by the pound key, the card's expiration date and CVC code, then choose option 3. You'll be prompted to enter your desired PIN code twice, and then notified when the PIN code has been successfully set.

No workaround, but remember your point-of-sale updates

These cards can be easily liquidated at Walmart through any of the most popular PIN-based transactions: loading prepaid cards, buying money orders, or making bill payments, and unlike OneVanilla cards before the latest changes, no "workaround" is required: these are immediately identified as PIN-enabled debit cards by Walmart payment terminals.

That doesn't mean you can let your guard down. The point-of-sale updates I've written about (here and here) are still in effect, so you'll still need to keep in mind, for each transaction type, whether the cashier or the customer goes first. Almost no cashiers are aware of the differences, so you may need to gently guide your cashier through each transaction.

I know many of my readers will also be pleased to know that, while not personalized, temporary PayPower cards are not branded in any way as gift cards, which may make them more palatable for some Walmart cashiers, although unfortunately not for those who insist on the cardholder's name being embossed or printed on the card.

Conclusion

Grocery stores are notoriously skeptical of large credit card purchases of prepaid debit and gift cards, so you'll want to take your time investigating as many store locations as possible and familiarizing yourself with the cashiers and managers. Be ready to provide photo ID without hesitation or complaint, and most importantly, be ready to take no for an answer.

The lower a profile you keep, the more likely your cashiers and managers are to be comfortable running larger transactions for you, and the more likely these opportunities are to remain available for you and others in your community.

Every change is an invitation to greatness

Do you remember April 1, the day CVS registers started the transition to blocking credit card usage for purchases of some prepaid cards? It's also the day I wrote that manufactured spend is here to stay. I took the change in coding at CVS as an invitation to explore other avenues of manufactured spend, and found that my reliance on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards was acting as an unnecessary throttle on my manufactured spend.

For example, rather than just buying OneVanilla cards for just a dollar more each, I had been relentlessly looking for new Vanilla-reloadable prepaid cards, each with pitifully low monthly load limits and a constant threat of shutdown (also, also, also, and also).

It was easy, it was cheap, and it was predictable.

Once the Vanilla Reload Network stopped being the backbone of my manufactured spend (and once I had more time to experiment and explore), I found to my chagrin that I'd been wasting my time: there was a whole big beautiful world of manufactured spend out there!

While I had already known about many of the techniques I use today, I cockily assumed they weren't worth my time, and I was wrong.

Something's going on with Vanilla prepaid debit cards

No one knows for sure who implemented the changes, whether they were intentional or not, or whether they're permanent or temporary. But for the last few days reports have appeared all over FlyerTalk and Twitter about OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, the famously convenient alternative to Vanilla Reload Network cards (since any 4 digits can be used as a card's PIN, without online or phone registration).

For the time being, OneVanilla and most, if not all, prepaid debit cards issued under the Vanilla brand (you'll find a small ice cream cone on all such cards) cannot be used at Walmart store locations for the three most popular kinds of manufactured spend transactions: money order purchases, bill payments, and loading of prepaid card products like Serve and Bluebird.

Non-Vanilla prepaid debit cards still work fine

Besides Vanilla, there are several other brands of prepaid debit cards, most of which are PIN-enabled, and most of which cost a dollar more for the $500 variety. Many of them are sold at frequently-bonused merchants like gas stations and grocery stores.

If you're looking for a substitute for OneVanilla cards, you might consider (slowly!) experimenting with those cards, if you have credit cards that still make it worth paying their higher activation fees.

But always look for alternatives to the prepaid treadmill

When I switched from my dependence on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, my manufactured spending increased substantially. But my time commitment also expanded, and not all of it was necessarily fun (though the travel it paid for sure was!). So I also started experimenting with techniques that wouldn't necessarily involve constantly visiting the same stores over and over, day after day.

And in fact, the current limitations on the usefulness of OneVanilla cards come just as I had started accelerating my use of other techniques, which don't require PIN-enabled debit cards at all.

Conclusion

Today you might be willing to pay $5.95 instead of $4.95, just like back in April you might have been willing to pay $4.95 instead of $3.95. But the more serious about this game you are, the more aggressively you should be looking for techniques that cost less, not more!

Best of all, there's a whole community out there willing to help you, with one big caveat: you have to first be willing to put the necessary work in to understand this game we love.

In the comments I'd love to hear reports of successes and failures using my readers' own favorite prepaid products.

The "other" 4% cash back portal

[edit 6/9/14: As Milenomics quickly pointed out on Twitter, BeFrugal is currently offering 4% cash back as well.]

As I explained last week, for the time being I don't have access to American Express gift cards. That doesn't mean I don't know that they're one of the most lucrative tools currently available for driving down the cost of manufactured spend: by clicking through shopping portals to the American Express gift card site, you can earn cash back that more than offsets the purchase and shipping fees associated with the gift cards themselves.

The Barclaycard Arrival RewardsBoost mall gets a lot of attention, whether for its relatively high payouts, the 10% rebate earned when redeeming Arrival miles against travel purchases, or the commissions (other) bloggers earn on successful applications for the card.

Unfortunately, the RewardsBoost portal isn't perfect. First of all, American Express gift cards have disappeared from the portal, at least for the time being. Secondly, if you don't have an Arrival card already, you may not be ready to apply for new credit, or have trouble being approved by Barclaycard for a new account. Finally, as discussed in the comments to this post, if you primarily redeem miles and points for your travel needs, you may simply not have enough paid travel purchases to justify running up large Arrival balances; when redeemed for cash back, an Arrival mile is worth just half a cent.

USAA MemberShop

Meanwhile, if you have a USAA membership, you have access to the MemberShop, another shopping portal operated by the same folks who run RewardsBoost and many of the airline co-branded shopping portals. Unlike those portals, however, the USAA MemberShop offers cold hard cash, deposited directly into your USAA checking account.

It's a little tricky to find the MemberShop: from your USAA home screen, click on "Our Products," then "Retail & Discounts:"

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From there, scroll down until you see MemberShop, and click "Shop Now."

Conclusion

The 3% cash back offered by TopCashBack ends in 6 days, and as always it's unclear if that means the rate will be going up, down, staying the same, or disappearing completely. If you have or are eligible for a USAA checking account, it's one more option to maximize your return on American Express gift cards.

New(est) changes to Walmart point-of-sale systems

There are no two ways about it: it's been a frustrating week in the world of manufactured spend. Just a month after I wrote my award-winning (or at least widely retweeted) post on dealing with changes to Walmart point-of-sale systems, the geniuses in Bentonville struck again and implemented another set of obstacles to seamless Walmart financial transactions.

I've been experimenting extensively with the new(est) changes. This is my report.

Processing of prepaid debit cards

Historically, there's been a divide between the way (many) Visa and (many) MasterCard prepaid debit cards have been processed at Walmart registers. Visas, particularly the widely-available cards administered under the Vanilla brand, have (until the most recent changes) been processed by default as debit cards. That means immediately after swiping, a PIN pad would appear and allow you to input either a pre-set or extemporaneous PIN code, depending on the prepaid debit card product.

Many MasterCards, on the other hand, have required users to manually instruct the point-of-sale system to process the card as debit; otherwise, the system initially recognized them as credit cards and refused the cards for debit-only transactions.

As a result of that historical difference, I have never used a MasterCard prepaid debit card at Walmart.

The latest changes have resulted in (many) Visa prepaid debit cards being processed just like (many) MasterCard prepaid debit cards have been in the past: initially as credit cards, and only after explicit user intervention as debit cards.

Change payment – but fast!

Over the past few days I've visited many different Walmart store locations and processed all of the transactions popular among my readers. I'm pleased to say that there is no transaction that previously could be conducted with a prepaid Visa debit card that cannot, today, be conducted with a prepaid Visa debit card.

But that doesn't mean it's easy.

Upon each swipe of a prepaid debit card, you have exactly one chance to alert the point-of-sale system to process your transaction as debit, instead of credit. That chance comes immediately after swiping the debit card, while the customer-facing keypad appears to still be "thinking."

On the keypads at my Walmart registers, you'll first see a red button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Then, within less than a second, a yellow "Change Payment" button will appear in the bottom center of the screen. That, and only that, is your cue to push the yellow button on the right side of the keypad, embossed with a left-facing arrow.

If you miss that chance your transaction will be processed as credit, and fail.

As I mentioned, I've done these transactions at a variety of Walmarts and at a variety of registers, and I've started mentally classifying them into "fast" and "slow" locations.

At "slow" locations, you may have up to 1.5 or 2 seconds to press "Change Payment," either using the touchscreen button or pressing the yellow left-facing arrow button.

At "fast" locations, you will have less than half a second, and you will probably not be able to press the on-screen button. But you can still press the left-facing arrow button the moment you see the yellow on-screen button appear, and it will have an identical function (the screen even displays the "depressed button" animation).

Why are so many experienced people having so many problems?

If all that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's been widely reported for many months with respect to MasterCard prepaid debit cards. But this latest update has caused problems even among people who are well aware of the historical situation and the ongoing updates. Why?

My best guess is that they aren't taking into account the interaction of the new(er) changes with the new(est) changes.

As a reminder, under what we might call "first generation" Walmart point-of-sale software, for all split-tender transactions the cashier first typed in the amount of each swipe, before the customer interacted with the terminal.

Under the "second generation" [new(er)] software, the customer first completes their interaction with the terminal, all the way through to typing in a PIN code, before the cashier types in the amount of the split tender.

The problem is that under the new(est) software, the customer's interaction with the terminal takes much, much longer. And it's difficult to convince a cashier to not interact with her register during the entire 8-12 seconds it takes for the customer to complete their interaction with the customer-facing terminal.

Emerging differences between money orders and bill payments

In my earlier reporting on the "new(er)" point-of-sale software, I said or implied that the new "customer first" protocol applied to all split-tender transactions.

I frankly don't know whether that was an error on my part from the beginning or whether a change has subsequently been implemented.

Either way, since the new(est) software changes have been implemented, I've observed a recurring difference between split-tender transactions for money orders and for bill payments.

It's now my belief that at some Walmart store locations with the new(est) software, split-tender transactions for money orders can still be processed "cashier first." Bill payment transactions, on the other hand, can only be processed "customer first."

I know better than to suggest that's the rule at every one of the thousands of store locations in the United States. But if you're having ongoing problems with these prepaid debit transactions, that would be the place I would start diagnosing the problem: either buy money orders or, during bill payments, find a way to convince your Customer Service and Money Center employees to resist processing the split tender until you've completely finished interacting with your customer-facing terminal.

Conclusion

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