In what is perhaps the best promotion we’ve seen in over six months, Woolworths will be offering 10x Everyday Rewards points per dollar spent on $50, $100 and variable load $25-500 Vanilla Mastercard gift cards.
These gift cards can be used almost anywhere Mastercard is accepted. They’re from the same company that makes the popular Coles Mastercard gift cards, meaning they should work at all the same places (e.g. payments to the ATO).
For each variable Mastercard you buy loaded with $500, you’ll effectively be paying $7.95 (the card purchase fee) to earn either $25 in Everyday Rewards Dollars or 2,500 Qantas points. That’s a very cheap way of buying Qantas points considering how much they’re worth.
Here are the details:
- Runs from Wed 5 Jun to Tue 11 Jun 2024.
- Only available in-store at Woolworths.
- Limit of five $50 or $100 cards per day (multiple transactions allowed).
- Limit of two $25-500 variable load cards per day (one transaction per day).
- Gift card purchase fees apply ($5.95-7.95).
- This offer is open to everyone and does not require activation.
How it works
To take advantage of this offer, simply scan your Everyday Rewards card when purchasing Mastercard gift cards at Woolworths between 5 Jun and 11 Jun 2024 and you should instantly earn 10x Everyday Rewards points per dollar spent on the cards (excluding purchase fee).
This offer is from the Woolworths catalogue so it’s automatically open to all Everyday Rewards members Australia-wide. It won’t appear in your Everyday Rewards app and you don’t need to activate or “boost” anything to participate.
The checkout should state how many points you are going to earn on the final screen before you pay. If you don’t see this, it’s possible you may have selected the wrong gift card by mistake (e.g. a Visa or Eftpos gift card).
Make sure you remember to respect the aforementioned purchase limits. For example, whilst you can buy a maximum of two variable load $25-500 Mastercard gift cards each day, they must both be purchased in the same transaction.
If the checkout won’t allow you to add two cards loaded with $500, you can try asking for a manager or supervisor to approve the purchase. Failing that, loading one of the gift cards with $499 or $499.99 often allows you to circumvent the $1,000 transaction limit some stores enforce.
This promotion will likely be very popular so if you live in or near the city you should aim to go to Woolworths first thing Wednesday morning. Outer suburban and regional stores usually maintain their gift card stocks for much longer.
The best value card
The only Mastercard gift card worth buying in this promotion is the $25-500 denomination loaded with $500. Whilst the $50 and $100 cards have slightly lower purchase fees, you’ll only earn a fraction of the points you would get with a $500 card.
| Gift card | Purchase fee | EDR points earned | Cost per EDR point |
| $50 Mastercard | $5.95 | 500 | 1.2 cents |
| $100 Mastercard | $5.95 | 1,000 | 0.6 cents |
| $20-500 Mastercard (loaded with $500) | $7.95 | 5,000 | 0.2 cents |
Points calculator
Use the calculator below to see how many points you will earn.
More information
If you’re new to these promotions, check out our step by step guide on how to earn points by buying gift cards.
If you want to know how often certain gift cards are included in these offers, see our Gift Card Promotion History tool.
To be kept informed about future promotions, follow us on Facebook and Instagram or subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
65 Responses
Can you purchase these gift cards with last month’s luxury gift cards?
I haven’t seen anyone try that but I would say the answer is almost certainly no.
Thank you!!
Yes it does work
I tried here with the eftpos and didn’t work
Can I use Coles Mastercard gift card to purchase these cards?
No. They’re essentially the same gift card and whilst it’s sometimes possible to use prepaid Mastercards to buy other types of gift cards, you can’t use them to buy more of the same.
Does shopback supermarket gift card works for this ?
I don’t believe so, no. Woolworths is much stricter than Coles when it comes to purchasing gift cards.
Hi! 🙂
Do you not earn 10x points on the activation fee (i.e. 59 points for $5.95 activation fee, etc.)
Also can you use prepaid electronic Woolworth’s gift cards purchased off their website to buy these Vanilla cards?
Thanks! 😉
You don’t earn points on the purchase fee at Woolworths, just the spendable amount you load onto the gift card.
No. Woolworths gift cards cannot be used to purchase any other gift cards.
For those gift cards is easier to check out at the counter instead of self-checkout as the staff need to manually activate cards one by one. They can also help with the approval of $1,000 transaction limit.
What is the expiry on them? 3 years?
Five years per the cardholder agreement.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend buying these gift cards unless you had a plan to use them fairly soon. All prepaid Mastercard and Visa gift cards are susceptible to what’s known as a BIN attack where criminals brute force card number, expiry and CVV combinations. It’s rare but the longer you leave an activated gift card sitting idle, the higher the chance that when you go to use it months or years from now there won’t be any money left. It’s a bit of pain getting them to issue you a new gift card when this happens.
Additionally, you must also factor in the opportunity cost of lost interest; the several hundred or thousand dollars that you have tied up in gift cards could otherwise be earning ~5% interest. Any benefit from you get from buying the gift cards during this offer will eventually be negated if you leave them long enough.
Can I pay for these on a credit card so as to double dip?
I would expect so as I have never once heard of a gift card purchase at Woolworths being treated any differently to a grocery shop.
That’s great!
Yes
If you wanted to pay a tax bill – can this be used but would need to by 32 $500 of them in 7 days. Is that possible?
Theoretically, you could buy $7,000 worth of $25-500 cards if you bought the maximum of two every day for the whole week that the promotion runs. If you wanted to buy more than two per day you would need to use multiple Everyday Rewards accounts.
That said, this promotion is going to be very popular so expect the $25-500 variable load Mastercards to sell out quickly.
I could also buy 5×100 cards each day too?
The fixed and variable purchase limits are separate so you could theoretically purchase five $100 cards and two $25-500 cards on the same day but I’m not sure why you’d want to as the fixed value cards are poor value.
Is there any Walter that I can unload these Mastercard gift cards and keep them all there together? Thank you!
I’m afraid not. If you’re only buying the $500 cards it shouldn’t be too hard to manage them all.
Can we add this to Apple wallet??
Unfortunately, no.
+1 to adding to apple wallet, or using these cards for online purchases.. is it possible? Can I add it to my paypal etc.
You can’t add them to your mobile wallet but they do work with PayPal. The issue with using these gift cards for online purchases is that most retailers don’t allow you to split payments across multiple cards so they’re not well suited to some purchases. It’s best if whatever you’re buying is exactly $100, $200, $500 etc.
A theoretical question: Given the ‘per day’ limit, could you buy 2 x $500 variable load cards each day for the seven days of the promotion? (14 x $500 cards over the promotion period)
You could do that but you may have trouble finding enough in stock.
Does the 7.95 fee come off the $500 balance or will the price be $507.95 for a $500 card?
The total price will be $507.95 if you purchase a card loaded with $500. You’ll then have $500 to spend.
Can these be used to pay the ATO on the ATO website and/or at Australia Post?
If they’re anything like their Coles Mastercard counterparts then you can just use them to pay the ATO via MyGov and Government EasyPay (0.2% surcharge). I don’t believe they’ll work at Australia Post.
I need to pay an amount of $953 for ato. I bought 2x of $500 gc but how can I use multiple cards to pay it? I can’t use more than one card at the government easy pay as I could see here. So I would need to pay like $500 and then pay again $453 (using the same payment reference number of course)? That would work? Thank you!
Hi, thanks for posting this. How do these cards look, and is there a brand name, or are they just called Mastercard gift cards?
Here’s a photo what the physical Mastercard gift cards look like.
I’m sure this has been asked before (sorry! I just can’t find a clear answer) but if I bought one of these and then bought the Apple gift card at 20x points, am I going to get 10x on the Mastercard and then 20x on the Apple card, or is the system clever enough to stop that?
You should be able to use these to buy Apple gift cards at both Woolworths and Coles but the thing is that it could be a while before we see another 20x points offer on Apple cards and anything could happen between now and then.
Isn’t there still an offer on Apple gift cards on until this Tuesday at Woolies x20
The Apple promotion ends before this Mastercard one begins.
Heard that there will be 20x points promotion for Restaurant Choice gift cards soon. So if I pay for the Restaurant gift cards with this Mastercard gift cards, I’ll still be earning the 20x?
Hey mate, do you know if I’d be able to use these on Airbnb? Am waiting for those to go 20x but seems like it’ll never happen at this rate!
You would be better off using the Mastercard gift cards to purchase Airbnb gift cards and then loading those onto your account. I’d suggest buying them on Qantas Marketplace if you can as you’ll earn another 3x Qantas points per dollar spent.
Genius. Cheers!
QANTAS marketplace will definitely accept the card right?
They accept Coles Mastercard gift cards which are by the same company as these cards. In any case, there are plenty of websites and shops that sell Airbnb gift cards so you have other options too.
Can I use the woolies EFTPOS cards to purchase these?
You can’t, unfortunately.
Hi, you mentioned a risk of BIN attack. Is it possible to extract the value of these cards back into cash? PayPal?
Thanks
Not really, no. PayPal, for example, can only be topped up from a bank account. If you don’t plan to use these cards fairly soon, I wouldn’t recommend buying them. There will surely be similar offers in future that you can take advantage of.
Can these be added as a linked card in the Qantas shopping app? (If I want to purchase something that has bonus Qantas points in the shopping app).
I have previously linked a prepaid gift card to Qantas Shopping to take advantage of a Card Offer so I would say yes, though keep in mind that it can take a day or two before it’s ready to be used.
I need 44.000 points to change my status to bronze at Qantas. Do you guys know how many gifts cards do I need ?
Bronze is the default Qantas Frequent Flyer status and it has nothing to do with the amount of points you earn. Might you be referring to Points Club or Points Club Plus status?
Can I use these cards to pay a $900 vicroad bill and how? Thank you!!!
Per this comment on OzBargain, you can do split payments across up to three cards when you visit a VicRoads service centre.
Do you earn points twice? Ie – once when you purchase the cards, and again if you spend the cards at woolworths?
Yes, though you’ll only get the 10x points when you purchase them. When spending them, you’ll earn the same amount of points as you would if you used any other payment method.
Purchased and activated 2x$500 cards today. I was able to pay my water bill but can’t seem to use it to pay for qantas flights and afterpay purchases. Anyone know the reason why? Am I supposed to register the card under my name or something?
Some merchants have stricter security measures that prevent you from using prepaid gift cards. Paying via PayPal usually works but that obviously won’t always be an option.
Interesting observation.
The checkout operator put the two cards through as two transactions because they wanted to avoid issues with a $1000 transaction.
Only after I got to the car did I realise the problem and almost had a heart attack.
Lo and behold, I still got points from both cards even though they were in two transaction, where as the terms and conditions say they have to be in the same transaction.
Just stating this information in case anyone might find it useful. However it might not be wise to count on it as Woolworths can always fall back to their terms and conditions.
Yes, it’s true that they are once again not enforcing the one transaction per day limit on the variable cards. That was also the case for the recent Eftpos gift cards promotion.
I thought about amending the article to state this but since the terms are clear that you need to do one transaction it’s better err on the side of caution in case they suddenly start enforcing it.
Can we add these cards into Amazon prime wallet and use it ? Does Amazon allow say xx $ from the gift card and remaining balance from personal debit/credit card
The better way to go about it would be to buy Amazon gift cards from a shop or website using these Mastercards as your payment method. That way you can just load all the credit onto your Amazon account.