Get your office supply bonus cards out. After a one-month transition to $5 off, Staples is once again offering fee-free Visa Gift Cards starting Sunday, May 8th and going through May14th.
The Deal
- Staples will waive the $6.95 activation fee when you buy a $200 Visa Gift Card from 5/8/22 to 5/14/22.
- These are Meta bank-issued Visa cards that have become increasingly difficult for some to liquidate. Make sure you know what you’re going to do with them before you buy.
Key Terms
- Limit 5 per customer per day
- Some stores will allow you to purchase more on multiple transactions (YMMV)
- In-store only
Quick Thoughts
This can be an easy point-generator for Ink Cash or Ink Plus cardholders (note that the Ink Plus is no longer available to new applicants).
In my case, my wife and I have 4 Ink Cash’s between us, so if we were going to a store, we could each pick up 5 fee-free $200 gift cards per store per day, earning 10K Ultimate Rewards in the process ($2000 in gift cards x 5 = 10,000 points). At some stores, they will allow us to buy $2K each by putting $1000 on each card, for a total of 20,000 Ultimate Rewards in one shot.
If you don’t have a Chase Ink Cash, see this post about why it’s my favorite no-annual fee card.
Overall, this is an easy way to generate some points without cost on this end of the deal if you’re going to Staples, remember that it’s in-store only.
You can see the full list of current Visa and Mastercard gift card deals here.
Other times this deal has run recently at Staples:
Fee-free Visa Gift Cards
- 2/27/22 to 3/5/22
- 1/16/22 to 1/22/22
- 12/12/21 to 12/18/21
- 10/31/21 to 11/13/21
- 10/17/21 to 10/23/21
- 9/26/21-10/2/21
- 9/5/21 to 9/11/21
- 8/8/21 to 8/14/21
- 7/11/21 to 7/17/21
- 6/13/21 to 6/19/21
- 5/9/21 to 5/15/21
- 2/28/21 to 3/6/21
- 1/17/21-1/23/21
- 12/26/20-1/2/21
- 12/6/20-12/12/20
- 11/8/20-11/14/20
- 10/18/20-10/24/20
- 10/11/20-10/17/20
- 8/30/20-9/5/20
- 8/2/20-8/8/20
- 7/5/20 – 7/11/20
- 6/7/20 – 6/13/20
- 2/23/20 – 2/29/20
- 1/12/20-1/19/20
- 12/15/19-12/21/19
- 11/3/19 – 11/16/19
- 9/28/19-10/5/19
- 9/1/19 = 9/7/19
- 8/4/19 – 8/10/19
- 6/30/19-7/6/19
- 5/5/19-5/11/19
- 1/13/19 – 1/19/19
- 11/11/18-11/17/18
Fee-free Mastercard Gift Cards
- 11/14/21 to 11/20/21
- 10/10/21 to 10/16/21
- 8/22/21-8/28/21
- 6/27/21-7/3/21
- 4/25/21-5/1/21
- 10/25/20-10/31/20
- 7/19/20 – 7/25/20
- 3/22/20 – 3/28/20
- 1/22/20 (online-only $100 cards)
- 12/1/19-12/7/19
- 10/20/19-10/26/19
- 7/21/19-7/27/19
- 4/21/19-4/27/19
- 3/24/19-3/30/19
