The closest Walmart store from my home has a kiosk. A month ago, (when I decided to switch from Redbird to Serve) I visited to see if a kiosk was in a good shape. At that time, it was working well. To make sure, I actually swiped my reloadable prepaid cards (Mango and PayPay prepaid) and proceeded until it prompted me to swipe a card of payment. And then I canceled because I just wanted to make sure it was working, and for both cards, it charges $3.74 reload fee.

Today, I visited there to load Serve with VGCs and MCGCs. My plan was to use five GCs. But, a kiosk was not working. The kiosk was surrounded by many shopping carts and put by a few plastic tapes. It wasn’t turned off, though. A display showed “Approval Needed”. Reportedly, it causes by loading a lot of money in the short period. (According to the forum, the limit is $1999 in 10 mins.) I have seen it frozen many times, but I have never seen it blocked by shopping carts and tapes.

There was no choice. I had to give up using the kiosk and tried to load at cashiers. I used an MCGC issued by US Bank, and it didn’t go through. The system treated the card as credit. A display of PIN pad prompted to sign for a moment and then automatically canceled the whole transaction. I asked a cashier to do it again. I tried to hit the cancel button to change from credit to debit. But other clerk or manager came up from behind and saw me using a gift card. He told the cashier they couldn’t accept gift cards for reloads. I gave up loading today and left the store.

After that, I headed to Family Dollar. The store is very close to Walmart. I have visited once and loaded with a Vanilla VGC. That was about a year ago. As the store I went yesterday, I was worried that they stop accepting debit cards for reloads. But they still allow it. I successfully loaded with $400VGC from Target.

There are many FD stores in my neighborhood. I’m going to visit all stores and see which store accept debit cards for reloads.

I remember that I was able to use MCGC by US bank at a kiosk. But I don’t remember how long ago. Maybe, the system updated to block these cards by now, or it happens only at a register. Or, if I hit cancel on PIN pad right after a swipe, does it give me a chance to choose between debit and credit?

Today, I got a bad news from WM and good one from FD. Since a reload with Vanilla VGC via FD is still working, I went Target.com to buy more VGCs, but they were sold out. However, I found an incredibly great new item. Click here to see it yourself.