How to Turn Your Gift Cards Into Cash

Gift cards are a popular choice to give out to employees, to family and friends as an incentive or gifts during Christmas or on any other occasion. We probably have received a bunch of gift cards in the last year or may have a number of gift cards lying around in the house or in drawers and desks. The thing is, most of the time we do not use those gift cards either because the value is not enough to get us what we want, or the stores it is accepted at is very far from us, that making the trip to use it is much more expensive than the value of the gift card. The question is, what will we do with all those gift cards? Will they be just gathering dust and then eventually get destroyed and unusable or better yet, we can sell gift cards to make us some real money!

Gift Cards

Gift cards work like gift cheques, each card has a predetermined value and you can use it to buy things or products of a particular store or mall. It is often given as gifts during Christmas since it saves the giver the trouble of choosing individual gifts, also it allows the recipient to choose their own gifts. It is also usually given as incentives or bonuses, since gift cards are not really convertible to cash it is nontaxable and the employee could enjoy its full value in purchasing whatever they want with it, as long as it is in that store.

Also, if a company purchases gift cards in bulk to give to their employees, they often get it discounted and hence can save money in the process rather than giving a cash bonus to their employees. Gift cards also do not have an expiry date, so you can actually use it later or save them up for more large item purchases.

What to Do with Gift Cards

Gift cards are meant to be exchanged for goods and supplies from the store it is accepted within the set monetary value of the gift card. If you have more than one gift card, you can actually combine its value so you could buy that expensive watch or that vacuum cleaner you have wanted for the longest time. Gift cards from malls and other retail shops are more often used as there are a lot of products to choose from. However there are also gift cards for specialty shops that often have too expensive products or are only found in larger cities that it is difficult to go to. So more often than not, everyone has a bunch of gift cards that remains to be unused and gathering dust. The next best thing to do with it is to sell gift cards online!

Selling Gift Cards

A quick internet search with keywords sell gift cards would yield a number of websites and companies that you could sell your old gift cards. However, companies have a set limit of gift card value that they would buy, if it is less than that, they would not accept it, but some do allow combined value so you need to check that first. You would want to sell your gift cards for the best value you could get for them, some companies offer up to 90% of the value of your gift card, so if your gift card is for twenty dollars, then you could get around eighteen dollars for it.

Online companies who buy gift cards allow you to input your gift card value and they will indicate the value they are offering for it, usually the price they would give you depends on the value of your gift card and where it can be accepted. Rare and hard to come by gift cards and those with higher value do fetch more. So before you decide which company to sell gift cards, make sure that the offered price is something that you are okay with. You can also look for other companies and see how much they would pay for it, choose one which has the best offer.

However, not all those who have good offers will actually pay you that amount, so make sure to check the feedback from other customers and whether they have really received the offered amount. If not, then try to find out what other deductions were made on it, usually they have hidden feels like handling and processing. Be wary of these kind of companies, you want someone that will be straightforward and has positive reviews.

Lastly, you would want an online company that is being run by actual people and not just by an automated system. You need a real person to talk to in case if you have concerns or questions regarding your transactions, and to get back to if you have difficulty claiming the payout from the gift cards you sold.

Making Money from Gift Cards

If you are strapped for cash, and you need a little something to tide you over, or if you have a pet project and you need funds to complete it, a number of gift cards would solve your problems. If what you have is not enough, you can always ask family and friends to give you their old gift cards. Rather than taking out a loan or asking family and friends for a loan, you could just ask for their old gift cards. They would be readily be happy to part with it. When you sell gift cards, it almost feels like winning the lottery, you have money you did not really expect to have. On the other hand, this is also a good business venture, you can go around your family, friends and neighbors and offer to buy their old gift cards for a lesser amount that the online companies would give you. If you could sell a twenty dollar value for eighteen dollars, then you could buy it for fifteen or twelve dollars and make a profit of three to six dollars per gift card. Not a bad margin of profit considering that you have not expended that much effort.