Does Discover Count 7-Eleven as a Gas Station?

Why We Care

Discover and Chase Freedom both offer 5% cashback at gas stations for three months of the year. You can view our full list of 5% cashback cards here.

We previously mentioned that some people have reported success cashing out the 5% Freedom category by purchasing OneVanilla gift cards at 7-Eleven; 7-Eleven is using coded by Visa as a gas station even when it’s not attached to a gas station at all. See here for the full list of Visa Merchant Category Codes.

We were naturally curious about the possibility of cashing out Discover 5% the same way.

Does Discover also count 7-Eleven as a gas station?

I went to 7-Eleven on  July 1 to cash out my Freedom card. While I was there I bought a couple packs of peanuts for a dollar and charged it on my Discover card. The charge showed up in my Discover account as “Gasoline” and the 5% cashback posted the following month. 

Caveats

•  Not all cashiers will allow purchasing Vanilla gift cards with a credit card.
• Vanilla Reload cards used to be able to be purchased at 7-11 with a credit card, but now the POS system doesn’t allow it.
• They also have Green Dot Money Paks. Probably won’t work with a credit card. Can anyone chime in on this?
• 7-Eleven POS system seems to have a security feature which blocks multiple high-dollar transactions in the same dollar amount. Since most cashiers only do one gift card at a time, you may need to go to 7-Eleven more than once.

Amex and Mastercard

There are some AmEx cards and Mastercards which have gas stations as a category bonus.

Do Amex and Mastercard count 7-Eleven as a gas station?

• AmEx – no
• Mastercard- yes

It has been reported on DansDeals Forums that the INK Mastercard successfully get 2x on 7-Eleven purchases. It’s also reported there that AmEx records regular 7-Eleven’s as “store only” “Category: Merchandise & Supplies – Groceries”. (Is it possible that in a 7-Eleven which sells gas, all purchases will get coded by AmEx as gas? Possibly.)

My Thoughts

When I stopped in 7-Eleven on July 1 to cash out my Freedom card, I bought two Paypal Cash cards for 503.95, and one Vanilla Visa for $504.95. The 7-Eleven POS didn’t give me any problems.

A couple weeks later I stopped in again to cash out my Discover card; this time, the 7-Eleven system allowed my first Paypal Cash card but stopped the second. I verified that this was a 7-Eleven block, not a Discover block. My guess is that this is a security block that doesn’t allow high dollar purchases on the same credit card, but I have no idea why I didn’t have this problem with my Freedom card just two weeks earlier in the same store. Maybe 7-Eleven updated their POS.

Now I’m left with another $996 to cash out on my Discover card. I can’t go to the 7-Eleven’s in my area because the cashiers don’t allow credit cards for gift card purchases, so I’ve been doing my “7-Eleven business” at the 7-Eleven across the street from  my doctor’s office. Next week I have a follow-up scheduled, so I’ll stop in and try to buy another two gift cards. Based on past experience, some POS security blocks only block the exact-dollar amount, so I’ll try buying two gift cards with slightly different denominations, like $490 and $495. We’ll see what happens…

[See an update on this in the post: 7-Eleven POS Limits Gift Card Purchases – My Experiences]