Got Extra Gift Cards Sitting Around? Sell Them for Fast Cash — and a Small Fee
Got a gift card you can’t — or don’t want to — use? We won’t tell. Here are legitimate places you can get fast cash for your gift cards.
Oct. 19 2022, Published 1:36 p.m. ET
If you’re reading this and you gave me a Cheesecake Factory gift card, it’s not you. It’s the fact that I live an hour and a half away from the nearest Cheesecake Factory that led me to learn how to sell gift cards for cash.
If you need to sell your own gift cards for cash, there are legitimate ways to do so. Most of them require a small fee, but the good ones won’t overcharge you.
Raise: Buy and sell discounted gift cards
Raise is a little bit different than your average gift card for cash setup. At its core, Raise is a marketplace that lets you buy and sell gift cards with different perks.
You can purchase discounted gift cards up to 30 percent off from more than 4,000 brands. If you buy a face-value gift card from one of its 150 retail partners, you get cash back.
When you sell gift cards, Raise takes a 15 percent fee. That may feel steep, but you can also sell partially used gift cards with a balance of at least $10. That means you can profit off of the bit of gift card that remains when you don’t plan on spending it.
CardCash is a longstanding gift card marketplace.
For CardCash, it’s all in the name. CardCash has been slinging gift cards in its bare-bones marketplace since 2009.
Buyers can purchase gift cards at a discount. For sellers, you can earn up to 92 percent of its value in cash, but it could be lower. CardCash values the gift card based on its total value and what store(s) it works at.
CardCash partners with 1,300+ brands and offers a 45-day guarantee. There’s even a bulk sell program (as well as a bulk buy program), in case you want to make a side hustle out of it.
Gameflip is an option if you want to sell gift cards and gaming goods for cash.
Gameflip is for the gamers of the bunch, but its audience goes beyond that. The platform is a marketplace to buy, sell, and trade digital goods, including gift cards from major brands as well as digital gaming goods.
The cool thing? You have flexibility on pricing the gift card yourself, but Gameflip recommends marking it 2 percent–15 percent off for a quick sale. Gameflip writes, “Depending on the popularity of your gift cards, you may need to adjust the asking price to attract buyers.” This makes Gameflip more akin to eBay than the other gift card-for-cash options.
Should you sell your gift card?
The gift card market is wild. In August, a survey from CreditCards.com revealed that “47 [percent] of U.S. adults say they have at least one unused gift card, voucher or store credit, adding up to $21 billion nationwide.”
That’s a hefty dose of lingering retail-friendly capital, so it’s safe to say that selling your gift card can only help. Just make sure you use a legitimate site and avoid the tell-tale signs of a digital financial scam, according to the Federal Trade Commission.