Update 11/5/23: Mark has commented below sharing that he was still able to buy a Nintendo eShop gift card online with a GameStop gift card. It might therefore be that the restriction might only be in-store, or perhaps nothing has been hard coded at all.
There’s more bad news today as it looks like GameStop has finally prevented customers from being able to use GameStop gift cards to buy digital and gaming gift cards.
This is an opportunity that flew somewhat under the radar as it’s not something GameStop actively publicized and people who knew about it didn’t want it to die. From what I can remember, you used to be able to pay with GameStop gift cards for pretty much any gift card which was nice when there were deals on GameStop gift cards themselves. Then at some point in the last few years that got more restrictive; GameStop stopped allowing that on some gift card brands, but it was still possible with certain other types of gift cards.
As of November 3, 2023 though, that’s seemingly no longer possible. An update has been sent to stores stating the following:
We will no longer accept gift cards as a form of payment to purchase any POSA cards. In addition, the POS will restrict gift cards to be used if a POSA card SKU is on the transaction.
That’s obviously bad news if this is an opportunity you’d been taking advantage of, especially if you’d stocked up on GameStop gift cards and hadn’t gotten around to redeeming them yet.
I imagine there’s still a somewhat workaround to this. There are currently four Choice and Happy gift card brands that have to be redeemed in-store rather than exchanged for gift cards online:
- Happy Treats
- Happy Holidays (green/penguin)
- Happy Holidays (red)
- Choice Season’s Greetings
Although these are gift cards, they’re de facto debit cards that can be redeemed at certain retailers. When those cards go on sale, I’m assuming you’ll still be able to use those to buy gift cards from GameStop as it’ll process differently to GameStop gift cards themselves.
h/t Eugene
There were some DPs on DoC that GameStop has also hard-coded their registers in early October to prevent buying gift cards with Happy cards, but I have not stopped in to check this myself. DPs here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/amazon-no-longer-allows-paying-for-third-party-giftcards-with-amazon-giftcard-balance/#comment-1706040
After seeing this last night, I was still able to buy Nintendo eShop gift cards on gamestop.com using GameStop gift cards. Is this only dead in-store, or will the website stop working too?
Interesting – I’d assumed they’d hard-coded against it, but perhaps not after all.
I’ve been aware of the PSN/Nintendo/Xbox angle for a few weeks now but maybe 2-3 days ago I found that GS was blocking the purchase of those cards with GCs. It is hardcoded so that when you are on the payment screen it very clearly displays that you can’t use a gift card for purchase now, whereas a week ago it was fine.