This one isn’t a deal post, but it’s a quick update on a new feature just introduced on Raise.
In case you’re not familiar with Raise, they’re a gift card exchange where you can buy and sell second-hand gift cards. It can be a good source of discounted gift cards if that brand isn’t on sale elsewhere, although it obviously involves a little more risk because it means at least one other person knows the gift card number and PIN. That said, Raise guarantees its cards for a year, thereby limiting your exposure.
Raise has today announced that they’ll also be selling first-hand gift cards. Rather than offering an instant discount like you get with the second-hand cards, you’ll instead earn cashback.
As an example of how this works, take a look at Best Buy gift cards. You can earn 2% cashback by buying first-hand cards, or save up to 2.4% instantly by buying a second hand gift card.
In the scenario above, you could save marginally more by buying second-hand cards. That doesn’t appear to always be the case though. For example, at the time of writing this post you could earn 6.5% cashback on first-hand GameStop gift cards but would only save up to 6.1% on second-hand cards.
It’s not clear yet whether first-hand gift card purchases will also earn shopping portal cashback or if that’ll be restricted to second-hand card purchases. What we do know though is that promo codes (such as today’s code SCORE saving 5% on travel and activities) will only work on second-hand gift cards, not first-hand ones.
The introduction of first-hand gift cards earning rewards is similar to their Raise Pay feature and is also a similar offering to other sites like MyGiftCardsPlus.
This new option is great to have, especially if the cashback rates are higher than the instant discounts at times.