Selling Gift Cards for Cash: 11 Things You Need to Know

Those extra gift cards or the cards for the places you would never shop are taking up wallet space. But, they’re also a miniature goldmine!

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Of the many ways to make some fast money, selling gift cards online is one of the more inventive ideas.

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As you get ready for selling gift cards for money, you need to know these essential aspects of online selling and cashback first.

1. You Can Return Gift Cards

The subject of returning gift cards has a ton of nuances such as how low the dollar amount is to redeem the remaining value for cash. In some states, the value is $10 in other states the value is $5 or even less.

Returning gift cards is usually more hassle than it’s worth and most people never bother to start the process.

Before you decide to return a gift card, check out the value of what you can get for selling it online.

Even if the difference is a few dollars, it’s likely you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration by selling gift cards for cash online rather than returning it to the store.

Use Raise for a quick and easy way to sell gift cards online for cash. Click here to sell your gift cards on Raise now.

Raise, and similar services will often pay you quickly for the gift cards you sell, and all you do is give the gift card code on the site.

Raise allows you to post your card in a competitive setting where you can control how much value you attempt to recover from the card.

2. Customer Service is a Big Deal

Many people steer clear of selling things online because they don’t want to deal with shady buyers. The thing is that many services that allow you to sell your gift cards offer customer service.

When deciding which service to use always look for sites that have around-the-clock customer service. Some offer email only customer service but have fast response times, and other services provide onsite chatbots to help you with your issue.

Customer service is there to help both the buyers and the sellers. These sites don’t benefit at all from only protecting the buyer.

If you believe that you fell prey to a scam or that someone is making a false, claim against a card they purchased from you, then you need help.

Turn to the site you used to post your gift card and seek help right away.

3. Choose Sites that Give You Payment Options

You can sell your gift cards for money or exchange your gift card for other postings on the site. But having payment options is always a plus.

Some sites allow you to choose payment methods such as PayPal, receive a check in the mail, or receive a visa gift card with the remaining balance.

PayPal is no doubt the best option unless you don’t have or want to set up a PayPal account. If you don’t already have a PayPal account, you can connect PayPal directly to your bank account and transfer money.

PayPal does have a 1% transfer fee for same-day transfers, but for one-business-day transfers, there are no fees.

A check in the mail isn’t as desirable to some people, but most don’t mind.

You’re getting money for a gift card that sat in your wallet or purse for months so waiting a week or two for a check shouldn’t be an issue.

Card Kangaroo is a great place to sell gift cards for cash online, click here to start selling now.

The final option is exchanging a gift card for another card which isn’t what most people hope for when they are getting rid of unwanted gift cards. Some sites do offer higher payment when you’re exchanging gift cards than when you’re merely selling them.

4. Shop Around for Cash Back Offers

Each site is a little different, and the best sites can fluctuate when it comes to what they’ll offer you for your gift card.

When selling gift cards online for cash, you’ll probably need to test the three or four most popular sites before deciding where to post your card.

Cardpool is one of the best-known sites, and they have referral offers and sign up offers too. Go to Cardpool now to get rid of unwanted gift cards.

The best thing about Cardpool is that the company purchases your card from you, rather than facilitating a sale between you and a buyer.

Outside of Cardpool, you have a slew of other sites that range usually provide 50 to 75% or your card’s value.

5. Trades Can Be A Better Exchange

Unfortunately, your $20 Starbucks gift card will only be worth $20 at Starbucks. You’ll be lucky to recover 80% in the best case scenario.

The lower the value on the card the less likely you are to notice or care about the difference.

But if you have a $100 gift card that you’re trying to sell the card for cash and can only get 60 or 70 dollars you might feel a little disappointed.

Many of these sites are willing to give an additional 10% when you exchange a card instead of selling it for cash.

To make a gift card trade that benefits you and the site carefully shop around for cards that you want and will use. Don’t opt for a card just because you know you might use the card in the future.

Visa gift cards, Amazon gift cards, and Target cards are often the best choices for exchanges because you can use them for necessities or shopping.

Deciding which gift cards are of better value for you depends on your shopping habits.

However, if you’re looking to make money from selling gift cards online for cash, this isn’t necessarily making money.

Whether it’s worth it the trade or not is always up to you and how quickly you want to get rid of the card. You should also make sure you’re comfortable with using electronic cards.

Amazon, Target, Starbucks and many other retailers make it easy to use electronic cards. Other retailers, however, make it difficult by restricting shoppers to online shopping only.

If you do most of your shopping online, you can stack exchanged gift cards with cash back at sites like Rakuten (formerly Ebates).

You can always place your posting at a high value and take a lower price with a site that sells faster later.

6. Selling Gift Cards Online Electronically

Cardpool typically has the highest payouts, and you get cash right away rather than waiting for a buyer.

Cardpool’s payouts usually fall in the 90% range for the popular cards such as Target, Best Buy or Starbucks.

Sign up and sell cards on Cardpool for instant payout for electronic gift cards.

As mentioned earlier, it’s always best to shop around to make sure you’re getting the best payout.

The lesser known cards don’t usually pay out as much. Cardpool verifies the balance when you sell the card directly to them, and they take card electronically for faster processing.

The best way to sell gift cards online is to sell electronic information. That means you provide all the information on the back of the card so that the final buyer can use it online.

Some sites such as Raise work with you to verify the balance and protect your card’s electronic information until the transaction.

You enter the serial number and PIN to verify the balance and then Raise will list the card for you. Raise is the only site that checks the balance for you to sell to a buyer.

7. Selling with Vouchers

This scenario is the worst when it comes to gift cards. You have a gift voucher and no idea how to get rid of it for cash.

Thankfully, many online sites that sell gift cards will also let you sell your gift vouchers.

The only difference is that since the gift vouchers usually don’t have electronic information the time frame for payment is much longer.

You may go as long as two weeks without pay for these, and the payment is almost always through a check sent via mail.

Be sure that when you post your voucher’s information, you show that it is still valid.

Usually, companies will keep the voucher, but sometimes they will write “void” somewhere on the voucher.

Selling a voided voucher can get you in trouble with the site and make selling future vouchers or gift cars difficult. People who do this contribute to the uneasy feelings around buying gift cards with a remaining balance online.

Keep your voucher exchange honest and look for sites that facilitate with the shipping process. Cardpool will often send you a shipping label for vouchers that don’t have electronic information.

When shipping you’ll want to pay for the tracking information so you can show proof of delivery to your buyer.

It’s best to use services that pay for shipping in these instances.

8. How to Protect Your Posts

There are ways that people have found to get all the information they need from your posting and use your card without paying anything.

To avoid this, you should always avoid posting pictures that include a PIN or card number. You can take a picture of the card and use a photo editing tool to cover the exposed numbers with a black box.

Typically, small steps like some minor editing are enough to protect your post.

You’ll also want to protect your personal information too. Never make your phone number, address, or email addresses visible to the public.

Services that let you sell your gift cards online for money go to great lengths to protect your personal information.

It’s happened before that someone who posted their email address will try to contact buyers through email hoping to get the full balance of the card back in cash. That doesn’t work.

Protect yourself and protect your posts. Exercise caution and review every photo and text box before publishing your post.

You can avoid these issues altogether by using services that purchase your cards outright rather than waiting for a buyer to make a purchase.

Head over to Cardcash to see what you can get for the remaining amount on your gift cards. CardCash provides payment on your cards within a few business days, and they make all the posts themselves, so you don’t have to worry.

9. How to Avoid Common Scams

Without a doubt, eBay is the online spot with the most scams when it comes to selling gift cards. Unfortunately, eBay scammers are figuring out how to take their tactics to these other online sites.

Unsuspecting sellers will happily go to great lengths to satisfy a potential buyer. A potential buyer may ask for detailed images or unedited images of the gift card.

To avoid these scams report buyers who ask for photos of the gift card right away. All they need to know is the balance and the retailer.

Additionally, a potential buyer may ask for your email address. Sometimes they’ll offer to exchange gift card information or say that they want your email for their records.

Neither of those things is true.

Every gift card exchange site offers a function to chat, or if there isn’t a chat function, then there’s no need for any buyer to attempt to contact you.

Buyers receive proof of the exchange through the site with their email that they have on file — this process for sellers.

It is enticing to hopefully get the full balance by working with a seller separately, but it’s not worth giving up the protection of the card selling site.

Finally, the scam that seems to run through sites such as Raise is a buyer purchasing the card, then upon receipt of the card making a purchase and reporting the card to the site as fraudulent.

To protect yourself from this, keep careful track of your card’s balance and record any purchases on the card.

If this happens to you, don’t stress. It is happening more often, and these sites know how to handle these situations.

Report the balance you checked when your setup the posting and the service would handle the rest.

You can dispute these claims through the site, but this is one of the cases where it’s essential to choose a place that has quality customer service available.

Because of this most people prefer to use sites that buy your card directly from you. Head over to Cardcash to see what you can get for the extra amount on your gift cards.

10. Only Communicate with Buyers Through the Site

The only way to avoid scams is insisting that all communication happens through the site you chose to use.

But other issues come with communicating with buyers through email.

People who attempt to use malicious software or gain access to your computer or even your banking information can accomplish all of these things through email.

The most common issue is that someone will reach out through email and ask you to open a document.

The document then infects your computer with any variety of malware that you may or may not notice right away.

Even if that person did end up paying the full amount for the gift card you sold them, they are cashing in on significant amounts of information that they can use to steal a person’s identity or gain access to your banking accounts.

It is so important to protect yourself from these situations that are far past a basic gift card scam. Only communicate with buyers through trusted sites.

11. In Demand Cards Go Faster and Have a Higher Return

Cards from favorite retailers such as Target or BestBuy are in demand. High-demand cards mean that you can get up to 95% of the card’s value and get paid faster.

Cards from other retailers may sit on the site longer without a buyer, but the sites that allow you to make a posting will generally have a higher payout in these cases.

A site that buys your card outright will give you a significantly lower payout for less popular retailers.

You can quickly gauge how likely it is for your card to sell fast on these sites. The sites will often let you know how “in-demand” your card is and what the likely payout is when you enter the card’s information.

Keep Making Money

Selling gift cards online is a great way to make some money cleaning out your closet.

But it’s not a long term income because there’s little to no reward in “wheeling and dealing” used gift cards.

A passive income is the best type of side hustle for people that want to keep making money with little effort. Click here to learn how to start building a passive income.

If you’re serious about creating more income and making money, then selling gift cards online for cash is just the start of your money making journey.