Mastercard Gift Card to pay online

[Elong629]

Has anyone ever used a mastercard gift card that you buy in store to pay for your tickets?? Just wondering if I could buy one of those to pay for my tickets...running a promotion at my local store and would earn some gas points for buying.  Any info appreciated!!!

[TheMiddleSeat]

If it's one of those prepaid credit cards I don't see why you couldn't use it, they work just like a credit card.  I do not believe you can use more than one credit card in a transaction on southwest.com so the value of the card would need to cover the entire purchase unless you were using travel funds or a Southwest gift card for some of the purchase and then using the credit card for the remainder.  Pretty sure it doesn't work the other way around, you can't say use credit card for $50 and then gift card or travel funds for remainder.

Is the promotion available if you buy Southwest gift cards?  That might be simpler if Southwest travel was the only item you planned on buying.

--TheMiddleSeat

[LindseyD]

@Elong629,

Great question, thanks for posting in the Southwest Community! 

[dfwskier]

I do it all the time, but I buy Southwest Gift Cards. They all work the same. The advantage of a Visa or Mastercard  gift card is that you can spend them anywhere.

Kroger is running a 4 points per dollar on gift cards right now. I'm about to got out and buy a $400 Southwest gift card which will get me 1600 fuel points which will give me a max gas discount of  $56 on two or more gas buys at Kroger- and I am going to spend the money with Southwest anyway. Why not get a $56 discount for doing it?

edit ad Kroger runs their 4 fuel point per dollar spent on gidt cards promotion a least once every month. I presume other retailers do something like that. Tomaximize the value of the deal, wait for the promotion. The regular rate is 2 fuel points per dollar spent.

Oh, and you can pay for your ticket with a combination of gift card sand credit cards. I've done it. 

Second edit add: now you can really get creative if you want to. I'll use a discover card to pay for the Southwest card. Discover gets me a 5% rebate this month a grocery stores -- or $20 on a $400 purchase. My cell phone service, Kroger i-wireless, wil give me a $16 discount for the 1600 points.

So the acutal cost of my $400 Southwest gift card will be $400 -($56 +20 +16) =  $308.

[LindseyD]

@dfwskier,

You're an A+ bargain hunter! Thanks for sharing the great tips! 

[chgoflyer]

For anyone seeking more info, there are quite a few forums online dedicated to "manufactured spending," which offer news of specific offers, and discuss the advantages -- and also the risks -- involved.

When it comes to Southwest specifically, keep in mind that using a Southwest gift card comes with some limitations worth considering.

Never use one to buy a "refundable" fare, since you can't get a refund to a gift card (even if within the first 24 hours on a WGA fare) -- all "refunds" become travel funds. Also, gift cards themselves are non-refundable, can't be replaced if lost or stolen, it's impossible to combine gift card amounts together, and the Southwest payment system limits gift cards to a maximum of three per passenger on each reservation, or two if you need to also apply a credit card.

If you're able to reduce the "cost" of a Southwest gift card through manufactured spending they can be worth using, but only if the limitations won't affect you. Otherwise, I generally do not recommend using them.

Here are the full terms and conditions.