Amazon.com used to allow you to purchase gift cards using a credit card in denominations as low as $0.15. It looks like they’ve now changed this and the minimum giftcard that can be purchased is $0.50. A lot of you are probably thinking “who cares…?” but these gift cards were useful for a variety of things:
- Meeting minimum transaction requirements. A lot of bank account bonuses require you to use your debit card a minimum amount of times to trigger a bonus. The new AmEx cards also have a minimum transaction requirement to trigger an additional earning bonus.
- Draining prepaid cards. Sometimes you’ll only have a little bit left on a gift card due to fees and this was a great way of getting every last cent out (assuming the card had at least 15¢ on it).
This shouldn’t affect a lot of people, but it’s going to be a bit of a hassle. Hopefully they don’t increase the minimum by anymore. The .co.uk site has gift cards starting from £0.1 (~$0.17USD).  We’ll be putting together a list of alternatives now that this method has been shut down. If you know of any alternatives please feel free to contact us or share in the comments.