Gift Card Reselling: Saveya Adds Marketplace Selling Option

Saveya is one of the popular options for selling gift cards, along with Cardpool, Cardcash, and Giftcardzen. For those wishing to sell the gift card themselves directly to consumers, the two options have always been eBay and Raise. See The Complete Guide to Selling your Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash for more details on both of these routes.

Saveya Marketplace

Saveya has now added an additional option of selling gift cards directly via the Saveya Marketplace. (I just made up the name right now.) You can choose to sell it directly to Saveya at the rates they are offering or to sell it yourself at the rate you choose on their Marketplace. Marketplace sales are mingled with Saveya’s own inventory; for a quick sale, you’ll have to price yourself better than Saveya, and this will bring your listing to the top-of-market and get it sold fast.

Not all brands are eligible for selling on the Marketplace, notably Lowe’s, Toys R Us, gas, and some more. It appears that the defining factor is this – any gift card that needs to be physically sold can not be sold on the Marketplace.

Commission Fees

Saveya charges a commission percentage of each sale sold on the Marketplace, typically 14%. Not all gift cards are set at that price – Walmart and Staples gift cards have a 9.5% commission rate, and Best Buy is 8%. I haven’t yet found any others that are lower than 14%.

Bulk sellers will probably have better rates eventually, but we don’t have info on this right now and it may take some time until that happens.

Comparing Rates

Raise charges 15% for selling on their marketplace, making Saveya slightly more competitve. For brands like Walmart, Staples, and Best Buy, the Saveya rates are much better.

Note that it’s not quite so simple, in practice, as Raise has built up a strong user base and continues to expand on that; it may be that merchandise will sell quicker or at better rates on Raise versus Saveya. (This is pure speculation on my part.)

Also, bulk sellers on Raise pay a reduced commission rate of 13% max, and as low as 8% or 10% for major brands. When comparing Raise Bulk versus Saveya, you’ll end up much better off with Raise. Of course, if Saveya offers better rates for bulk sellers, they may be the better option.

Giftcardgranny already has incorporated into their system the Saveya update and you can see an estimated payout amount in their system, along with their regular payout amount for direct sale. Note that the amounts quoted there are just estimates, depending on how much you price it. Also, the numbers displayed there are not completely accurate as they have the Saveya commission rate fixed at 14%; in fact, there is some variation on commission rate, as noted above. I expect that they’ll fix this over time.

Final Thoughts

At this point, selling direct versus listing on Saveya Marketplace is a little awkward since almost all cards are being sold at one rate – the rate that Saveya themselves are selling at. When selling on Raise, I’ll often list something at low discounts with the hope that the cards at better rates will be depleted and leave mine at top-of-market rates. With Saveya, however, it may not work exactly the same as they replenish their own inventory; technically, they can run out of cards to buy, but it somehow feels different.

In any case, the basic way to view it right now is that if you can beat Saveya’s own sell-rate then it will be worthwhile to sell it via the Marketplace and not direct. Even if the difference is minor, it’s still probably worthwhile since your card will sell immediately as it will show as the top-of-market rate.

I think the main motivation of Saveya here is not so much that they are interested in having a Marketplace, but more that they don’t want to lay out huge amounts of money to stock up on brands when sellers want to sell. Under the new system, it’s much easier for them to simply scale down their own rates, ‘forcing’ sellers onto the Marketplace, and not losing the business. Under the old system, if they scaled down too much, they’d lose out the business as the seller will go to another exchange to sell at. Now, they’re hoping to have a more consistent and dedicated seller base since sellers won’t have to branch out.