Getting Cash from Credit Card without Fees
Nope. Or at least, if it were possible the company offering such a credit card would quickly go out of business. Credit card companies make money off of fees from the merchants the user is buying from and from the users themselves. If they charged no fees to the user on cash advances and, in fact, gave a 3% back on cash advances, then it would be possible for a user to: The company would lose money until they stopped the loophole or went out of business. "While I think this is generally inadvisable, there are sites and communities dedicated to ""points churning"" credit card reward programs.  In general, no there is no easy way to get cash from a credit card, and receive the spending rewards, and not pay fees well in excess of your rewards value. However, there are people who figure out ways to do this kind of thing.  Like buying prepaid Visa cards $500 at a time from drug stores on a 5% bonus rewards month.  Or buying rolls of $1 coins from the US treasury with free shipping. The issue is the source of the fees.  When you spend money on your card the merchant pays a fee.  When you get cash from an ATM not only is there no merchant remitting a fee there is an ATM operator and a network both charging fees." You said: Use a credit card (to get my 3% Cash back) to withdraw cash ... Then you said: Is there any way to do this without paying a cash advance fee (or any fees in general)? Right there you have stated the inconsistency.  Withdrawing cash using a credit card is a cash advance.  You may or may not be charged a fee for doing the cash advance, but no credit card will offer you cash back on a cash advance, so you can't earn your 3% by using cash advances. As others have mentioned, you can sometimes get close by using the card to purchase things that are almost like cash, such as gift cards.  But you have to make a purchase. This was actually (sort of) possible a few years ago. The US Mint, trying to encourage use of dollar coins, would sell the coins to customers for face value and no shipping. Many people did exactly what you are proposing: bought hundreds/thousands of dollars worth of coins with credit cards, reaped the rewards, deposited the coins in the bank, and paid off the credit cards. See here, for example. Yeah, they don't have that program any more.  Of course, this sort of behavior was completely predictable and painfully obvious to the credit card companies, who, as far as I know, never let users net rewards on cash advances. They're trying to make money after all, unlike the Mint, which, uh, well...
"in theory, yes. in practice, no. largely because merchants pay a fee to process credit card transactions which normally exceeds the cash back you can get. i tried this with square, since their vendor fee was 2.75%, and i got 5% back on restaurants.  however, even though i registered with square as a restaurant, transactions were categorized as ""other services"" or something, so i only got 1% back and lost 1.75% net. moreover, if you did find a card/processor combination that left you with a net gain, they would eventually catch on and charge you with some sort of fraud.  i wasn't worried about it with the square experiment because it was only 1$, but if you tried to do this with large sums, a human would catch you. and if it was enough money to matter, there would be a lawsuit. if you were really unlucky, you might get charged with some terrorism crap like ""structuring"" deposits." "I'm a bit loathe to offer this response, but some pre-paid credit card vendors offer ""direct deposit"" to the card. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart is one of them -- the very first ""how to reload"" option is direct deposit from an employer: https://www.walmartmoneycard.com/walmart/account/learn-how I think this sort of service encourages bad money habits. People shouldn't have to pay fees to get their own money." Three things prevent you from doing this: Credit cards generally don't accept other credit cards as payment.  You could do this with a cash advance or balance transfer, but Cash advances and balance transfers usually have fees associated with them, negating any reward you might earn. Your card might have a no-fee balance transfer promotion going, but Cash advances and balance transfers generally aren't eligible for rewards. You can generally withdraw cash from an ATM with a major credit card. There are exceptions of course, but generally yes. It's a terrible deal unless you are in the most dire of straits. Avoid it. Credit card companies make money on purchases at a store from the store. If you pay late, they make money from you.  For an ATM, they make money by charging you a fee and then charging interest on day one with no grace period. This is a very high interest rate short term loan. You will also be charged a fee by the ATM itself - and you will pay interest on that fee! I suggest opening a Credit Card that doesn't charge Foreign currency conversion fees. Here is the list of cards without such a fee, Bankrate's Foreign transaction fee credit card chart If it's always the same person, you could open a joint account.  Then fees are avoided altogether.  How fast the funds are available depends on what you deposit.  Cash is immediate. One way you can accomplish this is on a cruise ship.  Most cruise ships have casinos, and most will allow you to sign out chips at the casino cage.  You can then exchange the chips for cash.   The chips that were signed for are resolved as room charges.  Those room charges can be charged to a CC.  Those signed for chips are rolled into the total room charges and are thus not treated as a cash advance.   The cost of the cruise not with standing, you could earn money in that form.  Step off the boat, deposit cash in the bank, and send a check to the CC company. All that being said, it is an cheap and safe way to get cash while you are traveling in that method. You don't need credit cards but there are few benefits, if you pay them off right away I assume you do have a debit card, since sometimes (like unattended gas stations or shopping on the web) cash is not accepted. I can't speak for India, but for US travelers abroad, using an ATM card that reimburses transaction fees is usually the most convenient and cheapest way to obtain foreign cash. There are several banks and brokerages that offer these types of ATM cards in the US. The exchange rate is competitive and because the fees are reimbursed it's cheaper and easy than going to a bank or kiosk to exchange currencies. I don't know if you can get accounts/cards like this in India that reimburse ATM fees. For purchases, using a credit card is fine, too. Some cards charge a foreign transaction fee of ~1%, some don't. The credit card I use most of the time does charge a 1% transaction fee, but I get 2% back in rewards so I still don't mind using it when traveling. If you had a CC issuer that allowed you to do bill-pay this way, I suspect the payment would be considered a cash advance that will trigger a fee and a pretty egregious cash advance specific interest rate.  It's not normal for a credit payment portal to accept a credit card as payment. If you were able to do this as a balance transfer, again there would be fees to transfer the balance and you would not earn any rewards from the transferred balance.  I think it's important to note that cash back benefits are effectively paid by merchant fees.  You make a $100 charge, the merchant pays about $2.50 in transaction fee, you're credited with about $1 of cash back (or points or whatever).  Absent a merchant transaction and the associated fee there's no pot of money from which to apply cash back rewards. "A few ideas: If you can find cards that don't have fees, you could use re-loadable debit/gift cards as your ""envelopes"". You can write the purpose for each card on its face. Carrying around more than a few cards will get unwieldy fast -- how many categories do you need? Use the rewards card strategy that was recommended to you. Put all of your spending on this. Carry a slip of paper in your wallet for each of your categories of spending. When you charge against a category, punch/mark/tear off a piece of the paper according to some scheme that will allow you to track the amount. You don't have to carry the envelopes around with you all the time. You wouldn't carry around the grocery envelope all the time -- unless you often just randomly decide to go grocery shopping while you're out and about. When you are going out and know you need to have cash for a certain purpose, pull some money from your envelope, put a paper clip around it with maybe a slip of paper, and put it into your wallet. You could carry around a few different categories of money this way without too much hassle. This requires planning your spending for the day. (The best way to avoid spending money is to not have it.)" All the fees are added to the amount you actually spend, but they only occur when you do these kind of transactions. They do not happen for any other reason. If you transfer a balance from another credit card this fee is added to your balance. Since this is your first credit card you don't have to transfer any balance. This site says that this is a special type of check, linked to your credit card account, not to your checking account. If you write this type of check to a merchant the additional fees will apply. If you use your credit card at an ATM this fee will be applied on top of the money you withdraw. Usually it is a percentage of the amount you withdraw. According to this site, a cash equivalent is something like casino chips which can be easily converted back into money without any loss.  If you use your credit card in a different currency, for example Euro but your credit cards currency is Dollar. Usually a percentage of the amount (~3-5%). If you withdraw money from a foreign currency ATM they add usually a fixed amount plus a percentage or any combination of this. "When you buy something with your credit card, the store pays a fee to the credit card company, typically a base fee of 15 to 50 cents plus 2 to 3% of the purchase. At least, that's what it was a few years back when I had a tiny business and I wanted to accept credit cards. Big chain stores pay less because they are ""buying in bulk"" and have negotiating power. Just because you aren't paying interest doesn't mean the credit card company isn't making money off of you. In fact if you pay your monthly bill promptly, they're probably making MORE off of you, because they're collecting 2 or 3% for a month or less, instead of the 1 to 2% per month that they can charge in interest. The only situation I know where you can get money from a credit card company for free is when they offer ""convenience checks"" or a balance transfer with no up-front fee. I get such an offer every now and then. I presume the credit card company does that for the same reason that stores give out free samples: they hope that if you try the card, you'll continue using it. To them, it's a marketing cost, no different than the cost of putting an ad on television." I am using my debit card regularly: in ATM's with a pin, in stores with my signature, and online. But later you say  But from what I recall from starting my own business (a LONG time ago), for debit cards there's only a per-transaction fee of like $0.25, not a percentage cut. Only pin transactions have just a per-transaction fee paid by you to the merchant (and you are reimbursed by Schwab).  If you use your card with just a signature or online without a pin, then it is a credit transaction from the merchant's perspective.  The merchant pays a fee and Schwab gets its cut of that.  So for two of the transaction types that you describe, the merchant pays Schwab (indirectly) out of your payment.  Only when you enter your pin does it process as a debit transaction where Schwab pays the merchant.   Because check cards withdraw the money from your account immediately, you don't even get the twenty to fifty day grace period.  So those merchant fees are pure profit for Schwab, offsetting the loss from the ATM fees.   You claim $4-5k in fees at $.25 each.  That's sixteen to twenty thousand transactions.  Assuming that several is four to five years, that's more than ten transactions a day.  That seems like a lot.  I can see three for meals, one for miscellaneous, and maybe some shopping.  But if I go shopping one day, I don't normally go again for a while.  I have trouble seeing a consistent average of five or more transactions a day.   Even if we use just the higher ATM fees (e.g. $2), that's still more than a transaction a day.  That's an extreme level of usage, particularly for someone who also makes frequent purchases via card.   I haven't done any other business with them. I find this confusing.  How does money get into your account?  At some point, you must have deposited money into the account.  You can't debit from an account without a positive balance.  So you must have done or be doing some kind of business with them.  If nothing else, they can invest the balance that you deposit.  Note that they make a profit off such investments.  They share some of that profit with you in the form of interest, but not that much really.   Of course, Schwab may still be losing money on your transactions.  We can't really tell without more information on how much of each transaction type you do and how much of a balance you maintain.  Perhaps they are hoping that you will do other, more profitable, activities in the future.   I doubt there are that many Schwab customers like you describe yourself.  As best I've been able to see, they advertise their banking services just to investment customers.  So it's unlikely that many customers who don't use their investment services use their banking services just for ATM reimbursements. Suppose you're writing a put with a strike price of 80. Say the share's(underlying asset) price goes down to 70. So the holder of the put will exercise the option. Ie he has a 'right to sell' a share worth 70 for rs 80. Whereas a put option writer has an 'obligation to buy' at rs 80 a share trading at rs 70. Always think from the perspective of the holder. If the holder exercises the option, the writer will suffer a loss. Maximum loss he suffers will be the break even FSP, which is Strike price reduced by the premium paid.. If he doesn't exercise the option the writer will make a profit, which can maximum be the put premium received.