10+ Ways To Buy Discounted iTunes Gift Cards

Following the news that iTunes gift cards can now be used to purchase Apple products, the market for their gift cards has fundamentally changed.

Apple doesn’t like offering discounts on their products, so it’s unlikely that they’ll run as many discounted iTunes gift card deals in the future. That means that if you want to buy their gift cards at a discount, your options will be limited.

All is not lost though. There are a number of ways that you can still buy their gift cards at a discount or earn additional rewards when buying them. As a result, here’s a list of 10+ ways to buy discounted iTunes gift cards – if I’ve missed anything off the list, let me know in the comments below.

If you want to make sure you never miss future iTunes gift card deals, sign up to get our daily email. You’ll get one email every afternoon listing every new deal that’s become available over the preceding 24 hours for both iTunes and all other brands.

One thing to note before getting to the list. Considering how expensive Apple products are, it might be better to purchase them using a credit card that offers good protection and/or warranty coverage as you’d be forgoing that protection when paying with gift cards.

1) Grocery Stores

For many people, this will be your best bet for a couple of reasons. First, many grocery stores have a loyalty program that gives bonus points when buying gift cards. For example, Kroger offers 2x fuel points all the time, as well as 4x fuel points promotions every couple of weeks or so. 2x fuel points can be worth 7% off gas, while 4x can save you up to 14% off gas. That not only works for gift cards bought in-store, but online too.

Other grocery store chains like Safeway, Giant Eagle, Stop & Shop and more have their own programs that can give you savings on gas and/or groceries.

A second benefit of buying iTunes gift cards from grocery stores is that you can pay with a credit card that earns more at grocery stores. You might have a card that earns 3% cashback, a card that earns 4x American Express Membership Rewards points, a card which earns 3x Citi ThankYou points, etc. Stacking those credit card rewards with the grocery store’s loyalty program could end up giving you savings and/or rewards worth 20% or more.

2) Raise + Promo Codes + Shopping Portal

Raise sells third party gift cards and you can buy them one of two ways. One option is to buy what they refer to as ‘Discount gift cards’. These are second hand gift cards you’re buying from someone else on Raise’s platform, so that introduces an element of risk to the transaction. Raise offers a 1 year guarantee on the cards though, so there’s not too much cause for concern there, especially seeing as you’d likely be redeeming the gift card sooner than that.

The discount you’ll receive will likely be low due to the new high value nature of iTunes gift cards. There are ways to make the purchase more rewarding though. First, Raise frequently offers promo codes that save you up to 7% on your purchase. Those promo codes are sometimes only available in certain categories (e.g. electronics, home and garden, etc.), but sometimes the code is valid sitewide.

Raise is also available on most shopping portals, so you can earn cashback or points/miles when clicking through to Raise from one of those portals. The rates can change day by day, so you can check all the current rates for Raise on Cashback Monitor.

In addition to the standard return, some shopping portals – usually airline portals, but sometimes Upromise as well – offer bonus miles or cashback when meeting certain spend thresholds. For example, they might give 2,000 bonus miles when spending $500 at any retailer which includes Raise. Spending $500 or more on iTunes gift cards would therefore earn you the bonus miles in addition to the standard miles you’d earn through the portal.

3) Raise (But No Promo Code Or Shopping Portal)

I mentioned above about buying ‘Discount gift cards’, but Raise offers an alternative – ‘Cash Back gift cards’. These are first hand gift cards which means they’re newly issued cards and so there’s no risk that someone else has access to the iTunes redemption code. Rather than getting an instant discount like you do with discount gift cards, you pay full price but earn cashback which can be redeemed against the cost of future cards.

One benefit of this option is that Raise tends to offer higher cashback rates than the discounts you could get as an alternative. For example, at the time of writing this post they’re offering 4% cashback, but there’s no guarantee that rate will last.

There are a couple of downsides with choosing the Cash Back gift card route over the Discount option though. You can’t use promo codes on Cash Back gift cards, nor will you be able to earn anything by clicking through from a shopping portal.

4) Fluz

Fluz is an app which offers cashback on your gift card purchases. At the time of writing this post, they’re offering 2% cashback when buying iTunes gift cards. That means that if you buy a $500 gift card, you’ll earn $10 cashback.

One of the benefits of Fluz is that you can buy any specific amount ranging from $5 to $500. If you’re in an Apple store or buying online and your transaction comes to $473.91, you can buy a gift card for that specific amount.

If you’ve not used Fluz before, you can earn 3 vouchers when signing up with a referral link – here’s my referral link. The vouchers can be used to earn up to 35% bonus cashback on select gift card brands (note that iTunes isn’t one of the eligible brands) and each voucher can earn a maximum of $3.50 bonus cashback in addition to that brand’s standard cashback rate. I’ve written about Fluz in far greater detail before, so check out this complete guide for more.

5) GiftCardMall + Shopping Portal

GiftCardMall is a site which sells many different merchant gift cards along with Visa gift cards. iTunes is one of the brands that they sell and you can earn cashback on the purchase by clicking through from a shopping portal. Here’s a link to GiftCardMall on Cashback Monitor where you can compare all the current shopping portal rates to ensure you get the best return.

GiftCardMall is sadly not available on Upromise or airline shopping portals, so you can’t take advantage of the occasional bonus promotion like you can with discount gift cards from Raise.

6) Slide

Slide is an app owned by Raise, but is completely separate from the Raise website and Raise app. It works in a similar way to Cash Back gift cards from Raise as you can buy an iTunes gift card for a specific amount and earn 4% cashback. For example, buying a $500 card will earn you $20 cashback.

When the Slide app became available on Android, I checked it out and didn’t think it was too special. Being able to get 4% cashback on iTunes gift cards at the time wasn’t anything special, but now that the gift cards can be used to buy Apple products, it’s a much better option.

7) eGifter

eGifter is a website that sells eGift cards, with iTunes being one of the brands they carry. You can buy $25-$200 gift cards and any $5 increment in between.

eGifter offers points when buying gift cards. For example, buying a $200 iTunes card earns you 530 eGifter points which is worth $5.30, so a 2.65% return.

One of the nice features of eGifter is the wide range of payment methods they provide as an option.

8) Chase Pay Yourself Back

Chase recently introduced a feature called Pay Yourself Back on a couple of their cards. That allows you to redeem Ultimate Rewards points for qualifying purchases at a 1.5cpp (cent per point) rate on the Sapphire Reserve or 1.25cpp on the Sapphire Preferred.

Although the feature was only introduced recently at the time of writing this post, it sounds like they might change the eligible categories every so often. Right now, grocery stores are an eligible category. That means that if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you can buy a $150 iTunes gift card at a grocery store and only have to redeem 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points. That’s a solid return, but you might be able to get better value by transferring your Ultimate Rewards points to travel transfer partners such as Hyatt.

Check out this post on Frequent Miler for more about how Pay Yourself Back works.

9) MPX

MPX is MileagePlus X, an app by United Airlines. The app has a few different features, with one of them being the option to buy first hand gift cards and earn bonus United miles.

The rate for iTunes gift cards might vary, but right now they’re offering 2 miles per dollar spent. If you have a United credit card, you’ll also earn 25% bonus miles. If you were to buy a $200 gift card and you have a United credit card, that means you’d earn 500 miles. How good of a deal that is will depend on how you value MileagePlus miles, but at a 1.3cpp valuation those miles would be worth $6.50. That’s an effective return of 3.25%.

10) Speedway

Speedway is a chain of gas stations that can be found in many states. They have a loyalty program – Speedy Rewards – which offers 20 points per dollar spent on merchandise. Not only does merchandise include food, drink, car accessories, etc., but third party gift cards too.

Buying a $200 iTunes gift card will therefore earn you 4,000 points. The value of Speedy Rewards points varies depending on how many you earn and how you redeem them, but if you earn enough points you can expect a ~2% return when redeeming them. Speedway tends to offer some kind of gift card deal each month, so that can add an additional 1-2% of value in terms of how many points you earn.

You can then pay for the gift cards using a credit card that earns more at gas stations to make the purchase even more rewarding.

11) Discover Cashback Bonus

Discover allows you to redeem cashback earned on their credit cards for some third party gift cards, with iTunes being one of the eligible brands. You never have to redeem your cashback for the full gift card value as Discover offers a bonus on each gift card.

The percentage varies by gift card brand. For iTunes, you can get a 5% discount which works out to be a ~5.26% bonus. For example, a $200 iTunes gift card will only cost you $190 in cashback.

A 5% discount is a decent deal, but the downside with this option is that you’re limited to how much cashback you’ve earned on your Discover card(s) – you can’t buy an unlimited number of $200 gift cards for $190.

12) Target RedCard

Target offers holders of its RedCard a 5% discount everyday when buying third party gift cards online and in-store. Target offers both credit and debit card versions of the RedCard, so the debit version is a great option if you don’t want a hard pull on your credit report. They also sometimes offer a signup bonus on the cards – even the debit version – such as $50 off a future order of $100+ when applying.

13) Best Buy Rewards

Best Buy has a rewards program which offers 1%, 2% or 2.5% back in rewards depending on whether you have their standard, Elite or Elite Plus status respectively.

Elite status is earned when spending $1,500 in a calendar year, while Elite Plus status is earned when spending $3,500 in a calendar year. A great feature about the My Best Buy rewards program is that you can earn points when buying gift cards, both for Best Buy and third party gift card brands like iTunes. This spend also goes towards earning Elite and Elite Plus status.

Other Options

There will hopefully be iTunes-specific gift card deals in the future, but it remains to be seen as to whether those transpire. Another option for buying discounted gift cards for iTunes is to take advantage of Amex Offers at stores that have a third party gift card rack. For example, if there’s a Staples Amex Offer in the future which gives 10% back as a statement credit, you could buy an iTunes gift card to take advantage of that offer.

Similarly, some Happy gift card brands can be used at retailers like Lowe’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, JCPenney, etc. that all have gift card racks. If your store carries iTunes cards, you can hopefully pay for them with a Happy gift card you bought at a discount elsewhere (check here for current Happy gift card deals). I say hopefully, because even though the registers at these stores aren’t hard coded to prevent you from buying third party gift cards with Happy gift cards, the cashier might now allow you to do that.

The list above is therefore a list of options that are available no matter when you want to buy their gift cards, rather than being reliant on specific offers. You can always find any available iTunes gift card deals here.

Question

Are there any other ways to save money on iTunes gift cards that I haven’t listed here? If so, let me know in the comments below.