Load airline meal vouchers to food/drink apps

Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.

You know where I’m going with this.

It’s pretty well known all over Reddit that these cards can load the Starbucks, Chick Fil-A, and McDonalds apps. They can also be used in-person at any restaurant/cafe, inside or outside the airport (I’ve seen people use them at restaurants in the city). I wanted to see if it was possible to conveniently cash out in another way, so I tried loading Fluz, but it didn’t work because you can’t set your MCC from the Payment Methods page, which is where you must go to add the card first. Fluz tries to pre-authorize the card with its default MCC, so it gets declined.

I then tried Chipotle, but there’s no way to load in the app, and trying to buy a gift card didn’t work since it goes through wgiftcard.com, which I presume does not have a food/drink MCC. I’m not sure if Cashstar would work either. It should work for restaurants that directly sell their own gift cards, but I couldn’t think of any restaurants off the top of my head that directly sell GCs that I would want. Feel free to share in the comments and I’ll add to the list.

I ended up loading to Chick Fil-A, since I’m more likely to use that than Starbucks.