American Express Serve
UPDATE: Note: Starting April 16, 2015 you will only be able to use an American Express® Card if you want to load your account with a credit card. Discover, MasterCard and Visa credit cards will no longer be supported after April 16.
As a result, this method is no longer available for other credit cards not AMEX. And of those AMEX cards, only a couple have been known to receive rewards using this method.
So to the tip I mentioned in a previous post about getting my first American Express card, Serve. As I stated before, it is a prepaid card so you load it with funds. You may load it with direct deposit, transfers from bank accounts, or even with other credit cards. The last one, credit cards, is where rewards or savings can be found.
The American Express Serve card also allows for online bill pay similar to banks. So for payments that you usually can't pay using your credit card like mortgages, rent, utilities, and loans, you can indirectly use your credit card with the Serve card. This would allow you to earn rewards or cash back on the deposit from your credit card to the Serve card.
The restrictions? There is a maximum deposit of $1000 a month for the regular Serve card coming from credit cards (and only $200 a day so you have to deposit it multiple times to reach the limit). But if you get the SoftCard Serve (it has the Tap to Pay functionality), it has a $1500 per month limit ($500 pay day). But don't worry about depositing money every month because you can set reoccurring deposits (and reoccurring payments as well).
As long has you deposit $500 every month, there will be no fees on this card. This should be easy to reach if you use it to pay rent/mortgage. (No fees in NY, TX, and VT). You can also avoid fees by setting up at least $1 in direct deposit every month.
There are some possible hitches/issues to this though. Some credit cards charge the deposit as a cash advance which usually come with additional fees; this may eliminate the extra benefits. Some cards don't allow users to earn rewards or cash back from the deposits of the Serve card.
I can definitely see how some people would not think this is worth the effort. For me, it's not much effort for a free dinner every month. And I get to have the benefits and advantages of an American Express card for the first time.
Most of all: Be responsible with your finances and credit.