American Express Serve is a reloadable prepaid card. One of its benefits is that you can sync up with Amex offers. Currently, there is an offer of $10 statement credit on the purchase of $200 or more American Express gift cards online. (expires on 07/30/2014)

The offer was able to add to my Serve card, but you can’t redeem the offer because American Express doesn’t accept prepaid cards as payment for purchases of AmEx GCs.

After I had placed an order, I received an email from AmEx network. It said:

Thank you for using your synced American Express® Card

ending in xxxxx at AMEX GIFT CARDS!

Look out for a statement credit within 90 days.

Soon after, I received another email from AmEx. It said, “Your Card order cannot be completed.” Here are the details.

Thank you for placing your order for prepaid American Express Card(s). Unfortunately, we cannot fulfill order #1114xxxx at this time.

Your order was not fulfilled for the following reasons: At this time we do not accept gift cards as a form of payment.

It’s not big deal, but money I tried to use for AmEx GC has been on hold for a long time. It’s been three days after the check-out. The money is still on hold.

And here is how the page at BeFrugal.com (online shopping portal) show this transaction.

I kind of knew that AmEx wouldn’t accept prepaid cards for the purchase of AmEx GCs. However, Serve synced with this offer. So I thought it would be worth a try. I missed one thing. I didn’t expect Serve kept the money on hold for so long time. You’d better not try to use prepaid cards for AmEx GCs.