Today I received an email from American Express Bluebird:

Effective immediately, you can add funds to your Account from your debit card for no fee (previously $2.00 per transaction).

The limit for loading funds with a debit card online is currently  $100/day and $1,000/month, so this isn’t going to allow you to liquidate thousands of dollars of gift cards quickly, but you can set up recurring transfers from your debit card to your Bluebird account. If you have a $3000 $1000 prepaid debit card, you can simply set up daily transfers from your debit card to your Bluebird account and wait 30 days before canceling them.

It also appears that you can add funds from a debit card without a PIN. Many prepaid debit cards allow users to assign a PIN, but this can be a cumbersome process. Also, many American Express debit cards don’t allow you to assign a PIN, so this could be useful for liquidating American Express debit cards.

While Bluebird restricts the number of debit cards that can be linked to your account to four, you can delete debit cards, so this restriction shouldn’t cause too many issues.

If you’re looking to manufacture spending by purchasing prepaid debit cards, this is a great development. Now you can purchase a prepaid debit card and convert it to cash through Bluebird for free, without taking a trip to Wal-Mart.

Edited: The limit for loading funds with debit cards is $1,000/month.