Potentially Huge: Earning Miles for Paying Your Bills at 7-11 With Debit and Gift Cards

Doctor of Credit writes about 7-11 ATM bill pay as a tool for using PIN-enabled gift cards and mileage-earning debit cards to pay bills.

Many 7-11 stores now have the ability to pay bill via their ATM machines. You can find which ones have the feature here.

These allow you to use some PIN enabled gift cards, line OneVanilla cards.

And it allows you to use debit cards, like my Suntrust Delta debit card (that I haven’t heard any recent successful reports of signing up for, some I’m grateful for my legacy card that earns 1 Delta mile per dollar; eventually that has to go away).

You can use the machine to pay bills like cell phone, cable, and insurance — all things I pay directly by credit card anyway. You can also pay some credit card issuers through these machines. Now that’s useful. (Lots of folks have already, of course, paid Citibank directly with debit cards.)

Up to $1000 can be paid at a time with the 7-11 ATM bill pay, in most cases for a $2 fee although the fee will vary by payee.

Read the whole Doctor of Credit post because he has a list of banks that let you pay them via this new system, and a good question and answer section on how this works.

Ultimately 7-11 ATM bill pay seems like a sorely needed option now that Evolve Money has become hobbled. I’m excited to try this because 7-11s are much more convenient to me than other stores where similar options are available.


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I’ve got this bookmarked to bring back when Softgate shuts down the rest of the useful BP recipients on Vcom as a prime example of blogs killing deals. (Not that this one hasn’t already degraded, but come on!)

  2. The link to locate ATMs having this is inaccurate. I had seen this recently and all the locations which showed up in Cardtronics website don’t have the VCOM ATMs anymore. They are replaced by Citibank ATMs which dont’ have billpay.

  3. What’s the point of this ? This is no different then MMS. Complete spoon feeding for some clicks? And a small blog like doctorofcredit is nothing in terms of exposure like a BA blog.

    I guess you failed to mention the shutdowns and high fees, and only one dc per transaction?

    I highly doubt your actually going to use this but instead are just scrambling for content.

  4. This option has been fairly well known in the “MS Community” for some time. Your post will throw some unneeded attention on this “loophole” but, in the end, it will likely fade back to obscurity.

    Why? Because it’s not lucrative enough.

    Basically, it’s going to cost you — at a minimum — $2 to “get rid of” a $500 gift card. That’s pretty steep. Walmart, despite its flaws, starting looking pretty good!

  5. @andrew. complete agreement on principal, but off base in this case. there is no deal here to kill. it’s prohibitively expensive. to meet minimum spend for a bonus- ummm, maybe. beyond that, it’s worthless unless/until the math changes dramatically.

  6. Gary – you’ve obviously never tried one of the -4 ATM machines – it’s a total cluster trying to enter the info – probably 5 minutes – just to kill a single VGC for $2. You’re welcome to it!

    And why are you discussing this AT ALL? Don’t you get enough eyeballs with the rest of your content to keep the $$$$ flowing from all the card pimping?

  7. Would you want to trust an ATM at a 7-11 with all your banking information, and not be worried about identity theft?
    I thought not.

  8. First off, use of the suntrust card does not generate any miles at this ATM. Second, if you do too many transactions, you will get a compliance call (you have to input your phone number during the transaction) with shutdown risk so proceed with caution.

  9. Thanks you for sharing. I know not about this. But thank it most of all to you critics above there who mentioned a site called Flyertalker. I see all the secret for everythings are over there and that peoples on those “threads” as they says, are so generos. Everyone on those threads are so kind to explains everything so we can all use the deals, as a team. I love that. thanks to flyertalker I have my friends call Walsmart and the credit card company’s tomorrows to asks more about them manufacturer spending techneeks. The customer servicing reps will be helful i knows that, god willingly. Flyertalker is the bomb, y’all. Thanks for letting us know bout’ it. and one more thing. stop bullying and harrrassing these bloggers, gets a life.

  10. It’s always amazing to me how many people in the MS game have the “last one in” mentality. Most in this game are incredibly nice and helpful people but I struggle to understand the flaming because of this post. As many said, it’s been out there for a while now and has degraded…so why all the fuss. Maybe, just maybe this post actually helped someone who didn’t know about it and now it’s just another vehicle in their MS strategy.

  11. Just a bit less than month after this post was published, it seems bill-pay at 7-11 using vanilla visa cards is dead. As of Oct 8, billpay debit card transactions are automatically canceled by the machine.

    So, do you now want to do a post highlighting bill-pay at K-mart (which I believe the doctororcredit blog also had a post on) next? 🙂

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