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The PayPal / American Express cashback deal definitely works with PayPal’s gift card shop

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A couple of weeks ago, American Express launched a new cashback deal with PayPal which is well worth a look.

This is an offer which triggers when you pay for anything, on any website (in theory £ payments only), via PayPal.

With the offer available across supplementary cards too, the sums add up. Looking at my wife and I, we have a potential of £340 cashback available which we still have three months to trigger.

I am determined to get every last penny of the £340!

Good American Express cashback deal with PayPal launched

Our £340 of potential cashback is made up of:

  • My Platinum: Spend £70, get £15 back (valid three times)
  • My Marriott Bonvoy Amex: Spend £70, get £15 back (valid three times)
  • My Business Platinum: Spend £300, get £60 back (valid once)
  • My British Airways Premium Plus: Spend £100, get £20 back (valid once)
  • My wife’s Gold: Spend £100, get £20 back (valid once)
  • My wife’s British Airways Premium Plus: Spend £70, get £15 back (valid three times)
  • My wife’s supplementary Platinum: Spend £70, get £15 back (valid three times)
  • My wife’s supplementary Business Gold: Spend £300, get £60 back (valid once)

It is worth noting that, after our original article, Amex widened out the offer to more cards. If you checked when we first wrote about this and didn’t see it, you may want to check again.

All PayPal offers end on 31st October.

Cumulative spending counts

Whilst this wasn’t surprising, I can confirm from my own spending to date that cumulative spending counts.

However, the only time I received an email from American Express about triggering the cashback was when I hit a threshold in one purchase. For the others I have triggered so far, the money turned up after a couple of days despite receiving no email.

PayPal sells gift cards and they count for cashback

Not a lot of people know that PayPal sells gift cards for various retailers – see here.

I did some test transactions and they worked – the cashback was triggered.

These were done with Uber gift cards, which can be used across rideshare and Uber Eats.

If you have Netflix, you can buy a Netflix gift card and credit it to your account – your monthly direct debit is automatically suspended until the value of the gift card is used up.

I would image that Spotify gift cards work in the same way. The Spotify offer is more attractive than it looks. The 12-month Spotify Premium gift cards gets you 12 months for the price of 10, so you save £20 immediately and then get Amex cashback on top. Do note that Spotify gift cards are only valid for individual subscriptions and not family ones.

Airbnb gift cards are also available.

Other routes for triggering the cashback

There is an active thread on this offer in the Head for Points forum – click here.

You will find other recommendations there, including a gift card website which sells Amazon vouchers. I don’t want to publicly recommend sites which I haven’t tried myself but you will find details in the forum if you want to give it a go.

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Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Platinum card, British Airways American Express

Comments (131)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • grex9101 says:
    30 Jul30 July 06:25

    Perhaps this has already been mentioned, but a cursory scan through hasn’t revealed any chat…:
    There is a website called prezzee who offer a large range of gift cards. They accept PayPal as payment and (in my experience), gift cards are available to use immediately.
    They also appear to offer 10% off second orders, obviously don’t count on that. There are some 10% discount codes floating about on Google, but I couldn’t find any that worked.
    Anyway, just another option.

  • Tim says:
    30 Jul30 July 06:50

    It also works with thr esso app which you can pay via PayPal.

    • BJ says:
      30 Jul30 July 08:38

      Thanks for this. Are you saying you add funds to the esso app and then use balance on app to pay fuel? Presumably we can then stack with Nectar promotions?

      • Tariq says:
        30 Jul30 July 11:01

        No, you just set your payment choice as PayPal in the Esso app and then the relevant card as the default in PayPal itself (assuming you have more than one linked card). I assume the other petrol station apps work in a similar way with the ability to pay via PayPal – although have used successfully to trigger the offer with Esso.

        About ready to do another £70 fill this weekend.

        • BJ says:
          30 Jul30 July 11:37

          Cheers Tariq, might be simplest option for me so I’ll have a look.

  • Rich says:
    30 Jul30 July 07:02

    Booking.com accepts payment by PayPal too. You can choose for PayPal do the conversion into GBP.

    • wolf says:
      30 Jul30 July 08:35

      …if you like to waste 10-15% of your money. (PayPal has the worst exchange rate of any financial service I’ve worked with). Pay in native currency!

      • Harry T says:
        30 Jul30 July 08:40

        @wolf x2

      • Rich says:
        30 Jul30 July 13:26

        Not on this case.

        Paypal charged me £101.79 to my Amex for a €119.34 hotel.

        About 0.2% on mid market rate

        • Rich says:
          30 Jul30 July 19:40

          Just done another booking.

          Mystery solved. Booking.com lets you choose which currency to charge to PayPal in, and they use mid market rates

  • Carlos says:
    30 Jul30 July 07:09

    No point of buying loads of giftcards as some shops only allow one gift card (and not dual payment. I.e giftcard and card)

  • Leon P says:
    30 Jul30 July 07:16

    Don’t see this in my list of offers (Platinum + BA Premium). Is it not something I need to activate?

    • Chas says:
      30 Jul30 July 07:52

      If you’ve got the offer, it would appear in the normal list, which you would then need to activate. Sounds like you’ve not been targeted this time, but worth checking back periodically in case it gets rolled out wider.

    • John says:
      30 Jul30 July 11:17

      It was limited to 30000 cards. You’re probably too late.

      • Steve W says:
        30 Jul30 July 12:59

        A friend of mine has also just checked not showing on any of her cards so I guess the 30000 limit has been reached

  • Stephan says:
    30 Jul30 July 07:52

    The cumulative spend is good to know.

  • meta says:
    30 Jul30 July 07:53

    I’ve been using mine on Ocado shops (also had extra £10 and £20 off shops) and a few other online purchases. Don’t want to faff around with gift cards. I’m reluctant to purchase any bigger/important items via PayPal as the I don’t any S75 rights. Having dealt with PayPal in the past, it’s not a pleasant experience when something goes wrong.

    • L Allen says:
      30 Jul30 July 08:03

      I didn’t think of paying Ocado via PayPal! Thanks for the suggestion

    • Mycity says:
      30 Jul30 July 08:23

      What am I missing here? I can’t see how I pay Ocado by PayPal thanka

      • Mycity says:
        30 Jul30 July 09:05

        Found how to add it in account settings thanks for the tip off

  • L Allen says:
    30 Jul30 July 08:02

    Good to know that cumulative spend works. I can’t see me spending £300 on my gold business card in one transaction but I might manage it with multiple smaller purchases. It’s a shame Amex don’t make this clearer in the offer details as I’ve not used the PayPal offer for business spend because of this.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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