From Amex Offers to digital coupons to restaurant promotions to smartphone apps to wholesale clubs & more, here are 40+ ways to save money on gift cards.
1) Amex Offers
If you have any American Express cards, scroll down when you log in to find your Amex Offers. There are two types of offers – some which offer bonus Membership Rewards points…
…and some which offer statement credits.
It’s important to read the terms as some Amex Offers are online-only, some are only for in-store purchases while others can be used both online and in-store.
As for how Amex Offers can save you money on gift cards, buying gift cards offer triggers the bonus/statement credit. Using the above examples, buying a $250 Saks Fifth Avenue gift card would earn you either 5,000 Membership Rewards points or a $50 statement credit, saving you 20%+ (depending on how you value Membership Rewards).
Some Amex Offers are eligible at stores where they have third party gift card racks like Lowe’s and Staples. In those instances, you can buy a gift card for any retailer/restaurant rather than only buying a gift card for the store which the Amex Offer is for.
2) Chase Offers
Chase Offers work in a similar way to Amex Offers but with a couple of differences. First, they’re often not as generous as they have lower cashback limits. Second, they’re usually based on you getting a percentage back rather than a fixed amount.
For example, the Chase Offer for Staples listed above offers 10% back with a maximum amount back of $6. Staples sells many gift cards, so this particular offer could save you 10% on up to $60 of those.
Some Chase Offers exclude gift cards and they’ve been known to enforce that in the past, so keep an eye on the terms.
3) Citi Offers
Similar to Amex Offers and Chase Offers, Citi has their own version called Chase Offers. These can include opportunities to buy gift cards, like getting $30 back when spending $100 at Wine.com, $15 back when spending $75 at Tommy Hilfiger, or 3% back at Best Buy.
Also similar to Chase Offers, offers can be loaded to each of your Citi cards if you’re targeted on those cards.
4) Grocery Stores
Many grocery stores offer digital coupons to save money on in-store products. Those coupons sometimes include third party gift cards, saving you 10-20%.
Something that’s important to be aware of is that some grocery stores own multiple chains. For example, Albertsons owns Safeway, Vons, Tom Thumb, Shaw’s and more, while Kroger owns Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter and more. When a deal is available at the parent company, it usually means it’s available at the other stores too. To help you keep track of that, you can refer to our guide of which grocery stores are owned by which chains.
5) Fuel Points
Many grocery store chains (e.g. Kroger, Safeway, etc.) offer fuel points on in-store purchases, with gift card purchases often earning 2x or 4x fuel points.
The fuel point programs of different chains work differently, but here’s an example of how Kroger’s works. Let’s say you loaded a 4x fuel points digital coupon to your Kroger Plus card and then spent $250 on gift cards. You’d end up with 1,000 fuel points which are worth $1 off per gallon on up to 35 gallons.
If you’re able to take advantage of the discount on all 35 gallons (e.g. by having a truck with a large tank or filling two household cars at a time), you’d save $35. That’s a saving of 14% based on the cost of the gift cards and it gets better if those gift cards were bought at a discount using other digital coupons.
6) Wholesale Clubs
Wholesale clubs like Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s don’t tend to have a wide selection of gift cards like you see at grocery stores. The gift cards that they do carry though are often cheaper than their actual value.
It’s often possible to save 20%-25% on dining gift cards, 10% on Southwest gift cards, etc.
7) Amazon
Amazon frequently offers Gold Box Deals on gift cards. Sometimes these are physical gift cards, while other times they’re eGift cards. If you have Prime membership, that’ll sometimes give you advance access before the deal goes live for everybody on Amazon’s website.
These deals also come in at least two forms. One type gives you an instant discount, while another gives Amazon promo credit. That promo credit can no longer be redeemed when purchasing further gift cards and can only be used to purchase items sold by and shipped by Amazon.
Here’s a link to any available Gold Box gift card deals (my affiliate link).
8) PayPal Digital Gifts
Not only does PayPal Digital Gifts sell on eBay, but they also have their own website that frequently offers discounted gift cards. Click here to check out their latest deals.
9) GiftCardMall
GiftCardMall is a website that sells first-hand gift cards. They frequently offer discounted gift cards which are usually listed on their promotions page (our affiliate link).
A great feature of GiftCardMall is that they appear on many cashback portals, offering 1-2% cashback in addition to any discounts you receive. Check out Cashback Monitor to compare rates across the different portals.
10) Giftcards.com
GiftCardMall is owned by Blackhawk Network which also owns Giftcards.com. Giftcards.com frequently runs gift card deals, not only on third party gift cards but Visa and Mastercard gift cards too. You can find existing sales on their promotions page (our affiliate link), but it’s worth clicking through from a shopping portal before making a purchase – here are current rates.
11) Office Depot/OfficeMax & Staples
Both Office Depot/OfficeMax and Staples have a good selection of gift cards in their store and they frequently run promotions on them.
The promotions are usually for Visa and Mastercard gift cards and come in the form of waived activation fees or $10/ $15 instant discounts when spending $300+ on those gift cards. It’s therefore often possible to buy Visa and Mastercard gift cards at no cost or a slight profit after the instant discount.
Staples tends to sell some discounted third party gift cards once or twice per month online, while Office Depot/OfficeMax tend to have one or two third party gift card deals in-store each month.
To increase the earnings from these deals, some credit cards offer 5x/5% back at office supply stores.
12) Restaurant Promo Cards
A few times every year – particularly leading up to the holiday season – chain restaurants run gift card promotions. These promotions are usually something along the lines of ‘Buy a $50 gift card and get a $15 promo card free’.
The promo cards tend to have an expiry date and so have to be used within a short date range. If you can use the promo cards at the right time though, it’s a good discount/bonus.
Check out our list of current restaurant gift card promotions to see if there are any deals right now.
13) Dosh
Dosh is an app, but they don’t sell gift cards. Instead, you link your credit and debit cards and you earn cashback when shopping in-store or online at participating retailers.
It sometimes says that gift card purchases are excluded for certain retailers, but that doesn’t seem to be strictly enforced other than for Office Depot. You can therefore sometimes earn cashback when buying gift cards in-store at retailers like Macy’s, H&M and more.
If you’re thinking of signing up for Dosh, here’s my referral link.
14) Cashback Portals
If you ever buy anything online, you should always check first to see if the retailer you’re purchasing from can be found on cashback portals. The easiest way to do this is to check Cashback Monitor as they list each portal’s rates for every retailer.
Gift card purchases are usually excluded in the terms for earning cashback, but that’s not always enforced. You should therefore always click through from a cashback portal before buying gift cards online just in case it tracks.
There are more than a dozen cashback portals and I don’t have experience with all of them. Here’s a list of the cashback portals I’ve used and have received payouts from. I’ve included my referral links where applicable as you can usually get a bonus when signing up. The bonus amounts often change, so I haven’t listed how much you’ll earn as I’m not certain it’ll be correct by the time you read this.
15) TopCashback (payouts)
I mentioned cashback portals above as a way to sometimes earn cashback when buying gift cards. TopCashback was one of the sites mentioned and they offer an additional opportunity to save money on gift cards.
Once you’ve earned cashback with them, you have many options for claiming it. You can have it sent directly to your checking account via ACH or to your PayPal account.
They also provide the option to receive it in the form of gift cards that have a bonus added on. Gift card brands include Amazon, Walmart, Target, Gap, Staples and many more, with a different bonus amount for each retailer.
16) TopCashback (purchases)
TopCashback also has a feature where you can buy gift cards and earn cashback on the purchase – you can find that here.
17) BankAmeriDeals
If you have a credit card with Bank of America, one of its features is access to BankAmeriDeals. These are targeted deals that reward you with a statement credit when shopping at certain retailers. It’s therefore very similar to Amex Offers, Chase Offers, Citi Offers, etc. and is in fact run on the same backend system as Chase Offers.
To find BankAmeriDeals, log in to your credit card account, then go to ‘Rewards & Deals’ and then ‘Cash Back Deals’. You have to load the offers to your card and savings are usually in the 5-10% range.
18) Coupon Codes
This is a rare opportunity, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. Websites occasionally – very occasionally – offer coupon codes to save money on gift cards. One example was Spafinder. Back when I first wrote this guide, you could use the code SPAFORALL to save 30% when buying gift cards worth $100+. Other examples include Giftcards.com and Amazon.
19) Kroger Online
Grocery stores were listed earlier on as places where you can buy discounted gift cards. Kroger also sells gift cards online; the orders are processed by GiftCardMall which means the payment doesn’t code as a grocery purchase, but if you’re logged into your Kroger account you’ll earn fuel points.
Kroger sometimes offers discounted gift cards online. To see if there are any current deals, click here and check the scrolling banner at the top of the page.
20) Gift Card Exchanges
Have you ever received a gift card but wished you could sell it instead? There are several online gift card exchanges where you can sell your gift cards at a discount, but that also means you can buy discounted gift cards from them too.
Be aware that there’s some risk involved with this option. All the opportunities listed above for buying discounted gift cards are all based on buying first-hand gift cards (i.e. no one has ever owned them before). Gift card exchanges are different as you’re buying second-hand – or possibly even third-hand – gift cards.
Most gift card exchanges therefore offer some kind of limited time guarantee. If you buy a card and find within a certain amount of time (often 45-100 days after purchase) that it has a zero balance, you can request a refund. It’s therefore best to not sit on gift cards bought this way but to use them ASAP.
Two of the most popular gift card exchanges are CardCash and Raise (my referral link for Raise). I think they sometimes offer new users $10 off their first order of $100+ when signing up directly rather than via a referral link. You’ll therefore be better off going that route if you plan on spending at least $100.
21) Newegg
Newegg is a website that mostly sells electronic items, but they also sell some eGift cards. They usually have some kind of gift card(s) available at a discount, so check this page to see their latest offers. There’s normally a scrolling banner listing deals, but there are sometimes other options available when scrolling down that page.
22) Groupon
Groupon is most commonly used to save money on activities, restaurants and services, but they occasionally sell discounted gift cards too.
For example, in the past they’ve sold $10 Starbucks gift cards for $5, $10 Chuck E. Cheese gift cards for $5 and $30 Hooters gift cards for $15.
23) T-Mobile Tuesdays
If you have cellphone service with T-Mobile, be sure to download the T-Mobile Tuesdays app or check out the T-Mobile Tuesdays website every Tuesday.
Some weeks offer better rewards than others, but a common reward is a $2 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card or $2 Baskin-Robbins gift card. You have to claim the reward on the Tuesday, but you can load the gift cards to the Dunkin’ Donuts app or Baskin-Robbins app respectively to ensure they doesn’t expire.
A $2 gift might not sound like much, but you can get one for each line of service. The Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards can also be combined within the app so that you have one larger balance rather than a collection of $2 cards.
24) American Express Platinum Card / Saks
If you have an American Express Platinum card – the personal version rather than the business version – one of the benefits is a twice-annual Saks benefit. You have to enroll in the benefit first and once you’ve done that, you get a $50 statement credit when spending $50+ at Saks from January-June, then another $50 statement credit from July-December.
Gift card purchases are meant to be excluded, but we’ve bought Saks gift cards both in-store and online and received the $50 statement credit each time.
25) Samsung Pay
In the past, you needed an eligible Samsung phone in order to take advantage of the occasional good gift card deal in Samsung Pay. There’s now a Samsung Pay gift card website run by CashStar which you can find here. It can sometimes be months between deals though, so this isn’t a reliable source of discounted gift cards.
26) Credit Card Bonus Categories
Many credit cards offer bonus points or miles when shopping at certain categories of retailers. The categories remain the same year-round on some cards, while other cards offer rotating categories every quarter.
For example, from October-December 2018, both the Chase Freedom and Discover cards offered 5% back at wholesale clubs. Sam’s Club gift cards can also be used at Walmart, so you could stock up on gift cards to lock in the 5% rewards.
27) American Express Gold Card / Restaurant Statement Credits
The American Express Gold card now comes with a benefit offering a $10 statement credit each month when using your card to pay at certain restaurants. This includes Grubhub, Seamless, The Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Shake Shack.
At the time of writing this guide, it wasn’t possible to order eGift cards each month to use the $10 credit as all of these restaurants used a third party to process their eGift cards. However, you can buy a $10 gift card (or whatever their lowest denomination is) in the restaurant.
28) Discover Cashback Bonus
Discover offers several ways to redeem the cashback you earn on their cards. One option is to redeem your cashback for gift cards, with all of them being offered with a bonus of at least $5.
Some of the bonuses are $25 gift cards for $20, while others are $75 gift cards for $70.
29) Drugstores
Drugstores like Rite Aid, Walgreens and CVS sometimes offer promotions on gift cards. These usually come in the form of earning rewards when buying certain values and types of gift cards. For example, buy $50 of GameStop gift cards and earn $7.50 in rewards. Walgreens on the other hand tends to offer $5 or $10 Walgreens gift cards free when buying two gift cards for certain brands.
30) AARP Rewards
AARP Rewards sells a number of different gift cards at a discount, with the list being updated each month. To take advantage of these deals, you need an AARP membership which can cost from as little as $12 for the first year and can be a worthwhile investment.
They also run Daily Deals from Monday to Friday. These go live at 12pm ET and usually sell out in a matter of minutes – if that. That’s because the Daily Deals tend to give discounts of 30% which makes most of them break even or profitable for reselling.
31) MyGiftCardsPlus
MyGiftCardsPlus is a site that offers rewards when purchasing gift cards. The rewards come in the form of cashback which can then be cashed out via ACH or PayPal depending on your earning preference.
The rewards aren’t amazing, so it’s often possible to get gift cards at a much better discount than the rewards you’d earn from MyGiftCardsPlus. For example, at the time of writing this you only get 1% in rewards on Uber and Chipotle gift cards, 4% for Sephora, 7% for Krispy Kreme, etc.
That said, they occasionally offer better rewards like 20% back on Cabela’s gift cards, 15% back on Hotels.com gift cards, etc. Those deals usually go live at 12pm ET on the first day of the month, but occasionally at that time on other days of the month too.
32) eGifter
eGifter is somewhat similar to MyGiftCardsPlus in that they sell first-hand gift cards and offer you rewards which can be used towards gift card purchases in the future. You can find all of their current deals here (our affiliate link). You can click through from a shopping portal to earn some cashback – here are the current rates. Note that some gift card brands are excluded from earning cashback.
33) Target
Target offers 5% off most third party gift cards to customers that hold their RedCard. There are a few exclusions though:
- Target gift cards
- Stockpile gift cards
- Gift of College gift cards
- Visa, Mastercard & American Express prepaid & gift cards
They also sometimes run gift card deals that are available online and in-store, such as 5% or 10% off prepaid phone gift cards. Other times they’ll give Target gift cards free when buying certain third party gift cards (e.g. buy $100 Apple gift card & get $10 Target gift card free).
34) Cash App
The Cash app offers Boosts that you can load to your Cash debit card. These can sometimes be worth taking advantage of, such as 10% back at any grocery store, although they usually have a $75 spend limit. You can get $5 when signing up (here’s my referral link – I’ll get $5 too).
35) Fluz
Fluz is an app where you can buy gift cards that are available instantly. The app gives you a percentage back depending on the retailer. The cashback you earn isn’t always great, but it’s nice that you can buy random amounts (e.g. $21.74) rather than having to buy a round figure which means keeping track of what’s left over.
Fluz also frequently runs Fluz Parties where they boost the cashback rates for certain gift cards like up to 12% cashback on Uber gift cards, up to 20% on Bath & Body Works, etc. Here’s my referral link.
36) Best Buy
Best Buy runs gift card deals each week online which are often available in-store too. At times it’s simply a straight discount, while other times you buy a full-priced gift card and get a Best Buy gift card free.
37) Giant Eagle
Giant Eagle is a grocery store chain with a presence in several states. In addition to selling gift cards in-store, they also sell gift cards online.
In the past they’d sometimes sell discounted gift cards online, but those deals are few and far between. Nowadays, the deals are usually where you earn bonus Perks.
38) CrayPay
CrayPay is an app that works in a somewhat similar way to Fluz in that you can buy gift cards instantly for random amounts (e.g. $23.41) rather than whole dollar amounts (e.g. $25).
Where it works slightly differently is that Fluz offers cashback, with you having to reach a certain threshold before you can cash out. CrayPay gives you an instant discount which makes that a better option if you’ll only be taking advantage of this kind of thing occasionally.
39) Ibotta
Most people who use Ibotta do so to save on their grocery purchases. The app also has a feature called ‘Pay With Ibotta’ which works similarly to Fluz and CrayPay. You select a brand, specify how much you want to buy, then they generate an instant gift card. In return, you earn cashback. That’s therefore the same way that Fluz works, but it’ll be easier for some people to cash out their Ibotta balance seeing as they’re likely supplementing it with cashback earned from grocery shopping offers.
One downside to Pay With Ibotta is that in 2020 they stopped allowing you to pay by credit card, so you can only pay by debit card now. That means there aren’t any credit card rewards on offer.
If you’re new to Ibotta, I’d appreciate it if you signed up through my referral link.
40) Raise (formerly Slide)
Raise is an app that used to be called Slide but which is created by Raise and is different to the Raise Marketplace app which is also created by Raise and which also sells gift cards (confusing, I know!).
When the app launched they offered a flat rate of 4% cashback on all gift cards, but nowadays rates differ depending on the brand. They sometimes run sales where they’ll boost the cashback rate available on a certain brand (e.g. 15% on Under Armour, 10% on Uber).
In the past the cashback you earned could be cashed out by having it sent to your PayPal or Venmo account. However, nowadays you earn Raise Cash which can only be redeemed for other gift cards sold by Raise.
41) Google Pay/GPay
In late 2020, Google relaunched its Google Pay app as GPay. As part of this relaunch, they added a card-linked element to it where you can earn cashback by activating an offer, adding it to your card(s) and then paying the retailer with that card. There’s no need to use your phone to pay (although that is an option) and opened up a bunch of stacking opportunities when buying gift cards.
One important thing to note is that Google Pay uses Rakuten for tracking, so it doesn’t stack with Rakuten, Cartera (airline shopping portals) or any other site or app which used Rakuten’s card-linked tracking system.
How To Stack Gift Card Purchases
Now that you have some ideas of ways you can save money on gift cards, check out our guide explaining 6 easy ways to stack gift card purchases to save even more money.