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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.

PayPal gift card shop

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.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

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

Comments (134)

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

  • Dan says:
    30 Jul30 July 11:31

    Question regarding paying using Gift card(s). If I were to make a purchase of a laptop and paid part using gift card and part using credit card – would I still get the credit card consumer protection on the item that I bought?

  • John says:
    30 Jul30 July 11:34

    A new Harvey Nichols cash back offer (£250/£50) has landed on my Amex plat. Does anybody know if this will stack with the existing biannual £50 credit?

  • Jon says:
    30 Jul30 July 11:45

    As mentioned in earlier comments for Esso, I would assume if you set your Shell payment method to PayPal this would also trigger the offer. Has anyone had any success?

    • WaynedP says:
      30 Jul30 July 12:34

      I have set it up in the Shell App, but am reluctant to test it. I could well be mistaken, but the problem as I understand it is that you can only use PayPal on Shell App with “Pay at the Pump”, not in-store.

      Pay at Pump is not compatible with the 3% discount I get for bring a Shell Energy utility customer, so if the (more valuable) Amex PayPal offer fails, I also lose out on the (less valuable, but still something) 3% discount 😕

  • Kevin says:
    30 Jul30 July 11:50

    I’ve been trying for days to get Apple App Store cards but get the following message:

    “We aren’t able to process your payment using your PayPal account at this time. Please go back to the merchant and try using a different funding source.”

    I cleared cache/history still same message. Anyone else gets this?

    • Blenz101 says:
      30 Jul30 July 15:46

      Yes. You have been flagged as a risk for unusual spending patterns. If you Google that phrase you will see others in the same boat.

      The responses from PayPal are generally that it could be location, pattern, amount etc.

      No much you can do about it but keep trying.

      • kwho says:
        30 Jul30 July 15:53

        Thought so… I made a £110 gift card purchase and occasional Royal Mail postage , so could not see what is suspicious about it. But when computer says no, then it is: NO. will keep trying….

  • TM says:
    30 Jul30 July 12:27

    Anyone have any experience with Airbnb gift cards recently? I am reading online that they can’t be used to clear the balance of an existing booking, and they must be applied at the time of initial booking. Is this still the case?

    • StanTheMan says:
      30 Jul30 July 13:18

      That is totally wrong….

      I had a balance to pay of £1500, that was due to be collected on 31st July. I bought 2 £100 gift cards last week, and added them to my airbnb account. I was warned by the airbnb help desk, that when I used them, the rest of the balance would also be collected from the card in the airbnb wallet.

      So, they 100% work, but you will also be charged the rest of the money owed, regardless of when that second payment is due.

      • TM says:
        30 Jul30 July 17:05

        Perfect, thank you for the update. What I described must have been a historic issue

  • aceman says:
    30 Jul30 July 13:13

    I dont have this paypal on any of my 3 cards. Did I miss the enrolment or did I just not get the offer…?

  • Mrs T says:
    30 Jul30 July 13:28

    Would buying a gift card, say M&S for example, on their website, paying via Paypal, to AMEX trigger a cash withdrawal charge?

  • Ladyshopper says:
    30 Jul30 July 13:37

    Used one of our credits to buy a Ninja dual zone airfryer. Been looking at them for a while. Already had £30 off on the Ninja site, used a 10% discount through blue light card, then got the £20 paypal credit back. Made it around £141 instead of the usual £229.

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

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