While many of us love receiving gift cards, sometimes they just don’t hit the mark. Maybe you received a gift card to a hardware store but aren’t a DIYer, or you’ve collected several gift cards for fast-food chains yet are trying to eat healthier. If you think that sitting in the junk drawer might be the fate of some of your gift cards you’re currently hanging onto, you should consider turning them into cash.
Unwanted gift cards can languish at the bottom of a pile of credit, debit and gift cards in a wallet for years — and could possibly expire. There’s a 2009 federal law that states that most gift cards can’t expire for five years, and many states don’t allow them to expire at all. Still, allowing gift cards to remain jammed in your wallet or a closet for years to come won’t benefit you.
In fact, it’s so common for people to not use gift cards that there’s a financial term that retailers use when doing tax accounting to describe income they make on gift cards or other prepaid services that consumers don’t redeem: breakage. The term refers to the gift card essentially being broken since it isn’t being used.
It’s never a bad thing for a retailer to have somebody spend money on a gift card that goes unused; it is, of course, not so great for the consumer. If you don’t want the gift card to become a gift for the retailer, but you don’t want to actually use a particular gift card to buy what the business is selling, there are ways you can turn your unused gift cards into cash. Read on to learn how.
[READ: How to Find Unclaimed Money.]
How to Sell Gift Cards Online
To sell gift cards online, find resale sites that will buy them for close to their face value, says Bethany Hollars, spokesperson for BrickSeek, a price-checking website. She advises comparing offer prices from several sites to get the highest price for your card.
“Most of these sites will also let you trade the gift card instead, in exchange for a retailer gift card that you will actually use,” she says, adding: “Don’t forget sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, where you can often sell gift cards for just a few dollars below their face value.”
Gift-card resale marketplaces have changed a lot over the years. Some didn’t survive the pandemic and some have merged with others. There may be one or two gift card sites that look safe but actually have a lousy reputation when you you check with the Better Business Bureau. If you pick a website not on this list to sell your unwanted gift cards, do some research about the site first. Here are eight websites and apps where you can sell unused gift cards online:
— CardCash.
— GiftCash.
— Raise.
— ClipKard.
— Gameflip.
— QuickcashMI.
— GiftCardBin.
— CardSell.
CardCash
You can sell your gift cards on CardCash, but keep in mind that how much you get for them will vary. For example, for a $25 Target card, you can expect to receive an offer of around $20, maybe a little more or less. Generally, you can receive up to 92% of the card’s value; you’ll never get the full 100%. The website has to make a profit somehow.
You also may be offered the opportunity to trade your gift card for another gift card, generally something that has more value than the cash. If you have a 1-800 Flowers gift card worth $100, for example, you may be able to get $60 in cash or a Walmart gift card worth $61.50. The cash and and gift card offerings vary.
GiftCash
Like other sites for selling gift cards, GiftCash allows you to simply type in the name of the card you want to sell and how much it’s worth to receive an offer. Generally, if the card is for a popular store like Target or Best Buy, you’ll probably get most of what it’s worth — somewhere in the high 80% range or low 90% range. At the time of this writing, GiftCash’s highest payout is 93%.
GiftCash accepts cards with a minimum value of $25 and will go as high as $2,000. (There are a few exceptions: For gift cards to Air Canada, Apple/iTunes and Petco, you need to have a minimum card value of $100.)
Raise
With Raise, you set the price of your gift card. It’s free to list your card, and if someone purchases it, you’ll give Raise a 15% commission. You can sell gift cards with partial balances, but any physical gift card has to have at least $10 on it. An eGift card must have at least a $5 balance. All gift card balances must be less than $2,000.
Raise will pay you through either ACH Direct Deposit or PayPal, neither of which have fees.
ClipKard
ClipKard has a quote tool that will reveal whether your card will be accepted and how much it’s worth. If you agree to the amount, you’ll send your gift card to ClipKard using a prepaid USPS shipping label. You can upgrade to priority shipping, but the added expense will come out of the money you receive. And whether you sell or buy a gift card here, you’ll earn reward points. If you buy or sell gift cards worth $50, you’ll get 50 points, for example. After you earn 1,000 points, you can cash them in for a $10 discount on future purchases.
This is probably a site that you would want to use if you had a lot of gift cards to sell — enough so that you could earn 1,000 points. If you have 50 points sitting on the website, it’s about as useful to you as an unwanted gift card sitting in a drawer.
[See: 15 Money-Saving Tips for Big Families.]
Gameflip
On Gameflip, gamers can, among other things, buy and sell gift cards. You’ll find gift cards from brands like Amazon and Starbucks and also from places like Google Play, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. You don’t have to be a gamer to use this site, but it helps. If you sell or buy a gift card here, you’ll make a Gameflip profile, then list your gift card along with your selling price. Gameflip suggests discounting your gift card at 2% to 15% of its value and will take a cut of the listing price, an 8% commission and a 2% digital fee if applicable. If you sell your gift card, the money will be transferred into your Gameflip wallet. At that point, you can withdraw it using digital payment systems.
If you’ve never heard of Wise, Payoneer, Skrill or Bitcoin — all digital currencies — this is your chance to learn.
QuickcashMI
The MI stands for Michigan, where the company is based. QuickcashMI is a pretty easy website to use. It will buy gift cards from a list of brands including JCPenney, IHOP and Amazon.
You simply enter the amount on the gift card and QuickcashMI will tell you how much it will pay. The amount they’ll fork over tends to depend on the brand (which is common among gift-card reselling websites). For instance, a $100 gift card to Zappos may net less cash than a $100 gift card to Amazon.
GiftCardBin
GiftCardBin no longer allows you to sell gift cards through its website, but you can go to a map on the site and type in your ZIP code. If one of its 600 partner locations is near you, you simply take in your gift card and a valid form of identification and get cash for it.
CardSell
After you download the CardSellapp, you share the gift card number and pin. You’ll get an offer once CardSell verifies the gift card with the retailer. If you accept the offer, you’ll get cash deposited into your PayPal account within 48 hours, according to the website.
[READ: Smart Ways to Gift Money to Children.]
Regift Your Gift Cards
Not interested in selling your unwanted gift cards? Consider giving them away. This could be a great way to save on birthday gifts or holiday gifts.
“If there’s someone in your life who you know would use the gift card, save yourself some money come Christmastime by regifting the card to them,” Hollars says. “This saves you money right off the top by eliminating one entry from your holiday shopping list.”
Donate Gift Cards
Another option is to put your unwanted gift cards toward a good cause. CardCash, for example, will donate them to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
You may also want to check out CharityChoice, which will allow you to turn your gift card into a donation. It takes 10% of the donation for marketing and administrative costs; it’s common for a small percentage of donations to nonprofits to go toward running the organization.
Gift Card Bank is another nonprofit that specializes in taking unwanted gift cards for food and clothing and giving them to people in financial distress.
Can You Return Gift Cards?
Like unwanted gifts, consumers can sometimes return unwanted gift cards to the stores where they were purchased and get the money back. But as you would expect, the answer is often no.
“Retailer policies differ on the return of store gift cards,” Hollars says. “Some retailers won’t accept their return at all, whereas others will only issue store credit in their place, which basically means you end up with a second gift card.”
“Some stores, such as Target, will accept gift card returns so long as they are unused and you have the original purchase receipt, which can make for an awkward conversation if you received the gift card as a, well, gift. Your best bet is to read the retailer’s return policy to see if this is a viable option,” she says.
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8 Sites to Cash in on Unused Gift Cards originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 12/20/22: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
