PayPal Debit Card does not Earn Cash Back with Evolve Money

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Evolve Money

PayPal Debit Card does not Earn Cash Back with Evolve Money

(Hat Tip to Frequent Miler’s post: Pay bills online with debit and prepaid cards)

Myth: Do you earn cash back using a PayPal Debit Card on Evolve Money to pay other bills, like my PayPal Extras Mastercard?

Fact: No, it looks like you don’t earn cash back using your PayPal Debit Card.

Data: I earned $10.50 cash back last month on $700 of eligible purchases (online Bluebird reloads).  I earn 1.5% cash back on every dollar, so $700 x 1.5% cash back = $10.50.  Currently, you can only get 1% cash back with a PayPal Debit Card.  I have had my card for 5-6 years, so I am grandfathered in to the higher cash back rate. I did not earn cash back on the other $1,112.50 of “purchases.”

PayPal Debit Card Payout

Taking a look at all my PayPal Debit Card activity from February, it looks like my 7 $100 online Bluebird reloads counted.  And that’s it.  None of my other purchases counted as eligible purchases, including the Evolve Money (listed as VESTA below).  

PayPal Debit Card Purchases Feb 2014

Possible Solution: Buy PayPal My Cash cards at CVS with a credit card for $503.95, earning 504 miles/points or $25.20 cash back (using the Citi Dividend Credit Card – link).  Then use your PayPal Debit Card to pay other bills through Evolve Money.  You might as well just buy Vanilla Reload Cards, but this is an alternative/additional method to pay bills.

PayPal Cash Card Front

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!


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21 thoughts on “PayPal Debit Card does not Earn Cash Back with Evolve Money

  1. Mike U

    That’s strange. I used Evolve to pay my student loans to Great Lakes, and I DID get cash back with my PayPal Business debit card.

    Reply
      1. Mike U

        I’m not sure. It could be a glitch in my favor, or maybe it depends on the type of PayPal debit card, or maybe the bill pay recipient? I don’t know for sure, but I get cash back with Evolve (3 separate $250 payments). I also have earned cash back with Square Cash, which I have read other reviews that the PayPal debit card wasn’t accepted as a form of payment.

        Reply
        1. Grant

          I used to get cash back for using my PayPal Debit Card with Square Cash, but I haven’t tried recently. It is hard to keep track of all the different methods I try and their results. You just have a lot of luck with PayPal I guess.

          Reply
  2. Brandon Mausler

    It seems like the best way to liquidate the money on your Pay Pal account is to use the Pay Pal debit card to buy either those free Pay Power prepaid debit cards, or $950 Reloadits at a store. Has anyone had success doing either?

    Reply
  3. chuk

    Hey Grant! I read your comment on frequent miler. If I understood correctly, you were saying that you can send money to your paypal business account from a debit card through evolve. Did I get that right?

    Reply
    1. Grant

      I spoke too soon in my comment. PayPal showed the same message as a normal cash back earning charge but the charge didn’t earn cash back. As far as I’m concerned, Evolve Money will not earn PayPal cash back.

      Reply
      1. chuck

        I was referring to a different comment where you mentioned that you did a test of $1 using a gift card to send money TO your paypal account. “I tried a $1 sample payment to PayPal Buyer Card, which might be a PayPal Extras MasterCard, but I will have to wait and see if the payment shows up in the right place.” So does that meant that we can send money from a gift card TO a paypal account?

        Reply
  4. Nvtech

    Something looks wrong for me. Evolve money is not taking my Gift Visa debit card. I am trying to make a payment and I am getting an error message ” The entered card is not a Debit Card”.
    Do any of you see this issue?

    Reply
    1. Grant

      I don’t have any Visa Gift Cards with me, so I can verify if this is working or not. Hopefully someone else can answer your question.

      Reply
  5. RJP

    Any guidance as to which specific GCs can be use through Evolve to pay bills? I have access to AmEx, MasterCard (US Bank), and Visa (MetaBank) variable load GCs with no fee/charge. Any help appreciated. Just tried a $50 fixed-amount MasterCard and got back a “This is not a debit card” message when tried to submit payment. Greatly appreciate any specific details on how to make Evolve work to liquidate GCs. Thanks!

    Reply
      1. RJP

        Let me know if you come across anything. With free access to $500 variable-load GCs, my biggest issue is liquidating them! $10k month per Walmart POS load onto BBird is easy. I can also do WalMart MO’s as well, but I thing the women at WalMart and my bank are starting to wonder what my deal is. :-) I have roughly $5k in monthly bills that are available through Evolve. If I could tap that through Evolve that would be phenomenal, and save me five stops/month at WalMart and my bank for MO’s.

        Reply
        1. Grant

          I forget if you told me what your source of the gift cards was. Sounds like you have a great thing going. Have you tried different gift cards on Evolve? Also, you might want to get a Go Bank card to supplement your Bluebird Card. You can load that card at Walmart as well.

          Reply
          1. RJP

            Local grocery store. Register kicks out a “$6.00 Off Your Next Order” coupon whenever your total grocery order is >$400. Cashiers happily run each $500 card through seperately, applying the $6.00 coupon generated from one card purchase against the price of the next.

            Will have to look into GoBank.for some reason I dismissed the idea when I initially looked into it. But that was before I stumbled into no-cost GCs.

          2. Grant

            Ahh right. That’s a great deal you got going. You can probably also get another Bluebird card if you have friends/family that will sign up and let you have theirs.

  6. Victor

    Hey Grant… Have you used your paypal debit card to pay bills on evolve lately? I tried using my Paypal business debit card to pay bills on evolve but was not successful. There was an error message about evolve not accepting this type of card. Any idea?

    Reply
    1. Grant

      I tried it a few weeks ago, but it got rejected. I think Evolve is processing the charge as a credit card, so it doesn’t go through. I just used Go Bank to pay my Evolve Money bill.

      Reply
      1. Victor

        Alright… I thought maybe I wasn’t doing it right… btw, how to do load your Gobank? I used to do VRC but those are hard to come by these days…

        Reply

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