We see an occasional coin deal from the U.S. Mint which is profitable for resell. This post addresses which credit card to use on those purchases.
A few notes about payments to U.S. Mint:
- The official terms of American Express state that coin purchases are considered a cash advance which would incur fees and would not earn points. In practice, reports indicate that U.S. Mint purchases code as ordinary purchases and earn points. Still, you might not want to risk it.
- All U.S. Bank and Elan credit cards do not earn points on U.S. Mint purchases. Don’t use any card from those issuers such as the Altitude cards, the Fidelity 2% card, or any other. These purchases also do not count toward a spend requirement on U.S. Bank/Elan cards (1).
- The U.S. Mint typically does accept Paypal. I assume Paypal payments will have the same issues in terms of using AmEx or U.S. Bank/Elan cards as when paying directly. (Note: When household-limited deals come up, such as the coin deals we often see, they might disallow Paypal payments to help enforce the household limit. 1, 2)
Other than AmEx and US Bank/Elan, all other cards are fine for use on the U.S. Mint – they earn points and they are not considered cash advances. This includes Chase, Citi, Barclay, Capital One, etc, etc.
Purchases from the U.S. Mint code as 9399 ‘Government Services – DEFAULT’, according to reports (1, 2). These purchases won’t earn any sort of category. They don’t even earn an online purchase category bonus (e.g. Bank of America Cash Rewards 1, 2) since they code as government, not online retail.
Either use a card that has a spend bonus on it or else just use a regular everyday credit card, see Best Credit Cards For Every Day Purchases. Some examples might be the Citi Double Cash, Chase Freedom Unlimited, Capital One Venture, Barclay Arrival+, or Bank of America Premium Rewards card.
Please add any other notes and tips that we missed in the comments below.
