Review: Cardpool Gift Card Seller Marketplace for Increased Payout

Cardpool Marketplace

Around a year ago, gift card exchange Cardpool began advertising for a marketplace seller’s option where users would list cards for sale at their own set prices and get paid out when the card sells. I’m not sure when it publicly launched, but I’ve only recently seen a few people mention using it, largely with positive experiences.

Sell gift cards with Cardpool

The new Cardpool marketplace option is like the Raise listings model where you retain ownership of the card and only get paid if and when the card sells. This is different than the standard gift card exchange who buys your cards upon submission and sends out payment right away.

The major advantage for the company with a marketplace listings option is that they can allow unlimited amounts of gift cards without worrying about their own float limits since each individual seller floats their own cards. For that reason, when using the listings model on Raise or Cardpool marketplace there’s potential to take home higher payout rates by taking on yourself the risk and burden of floating the cards.

If you have $100 Gap gift card you can either sell it outright to Cardpool and you might get a $70 payout, or you can list it for any price you’d like and wait for it to sell. Using this option you can take home $78 when listing at Cardpool’s suggested rate, or you can have the card listed at the top-allowed rate (basically listing at a near 0% discount) and get $88.05 payout.

Most gift cards are listed electronically. When it must be sent in physically, they’ll make that clear. They’ll also give you a label to send it in. After listing the card, you can continue to edit the prices as you wish until it sells.

The two problems readers note are: (1) long wait times until card gets approved for sale (can take a week or longer), and (2) they’ll sometimes arbitrarily deny cards after a few days, claiming security reasons.

Commission Rates

Unlike Raise, Cardpool obscures the actual commission rate and just tells you the payout rate. I don’t like the vagueness, but I guess it’s not so bad for selling on a small scale.

It’s not so hard to figure out the commission rate, though. Simply increase the payout you want to as high as Cardpool allows thus bringing your card to zero or near-zero discount, then see what remains to figure out what their commission is.

A quick look at various brands, it seems Walmart, Best Buy, and Apple Store are a ~7% commission rate, Target seems to be ~8.75%, Gap seems to be ~12%, Delta Airlines seems to be 13%. As expected, the top brands are in the 7-10% range while ordinary brands get hit with the 13% max commission rate. There are some exceptions – for example, I noticed Allen Edmonds at ~11.25% commission.

It would be much more competitive and user-friendly if they just came out with a list of commission rates to allow people to see what they have to offer. They also don’t allow multiple listings at once: you have to do one at a time, not a serious bulk seller model like Raise. I’m guessing Cardpool has as separate system for high-volume sellers to use, and I’d assume bulk sellers get better commission rates on Cardpool as well.

Payout

You can get significantly more by using the marketplace if you don’t listen to Cardpool’s advised listing rate and instead list it at the ceiling, essentially having the card listed at a near-zero discount. But then you’ll have to wait until it actually sells at a 0% discount which might take some time or it might never sell at all.

The larger question is how quickly things sell on Cardpool. Raise is known to have built a strong customer base, and top brands sell very quickly when priced competitively. As one of the larger and established gift card exchanges, Cardpool probably has a strong customer base too, but it’s something that needs data and testing.

An interesting feature on Cardpool is the option to get 6% increase in payout when taking it in the form on an Amazon gift card; they offer this option on both instant sales and marketplace sales. You can also edit your payout preference between check and Amazon gift card after listing.

Personally, I have an Amazon credit card which gets 5% back so I don’t consider 6% very exciting, though I did choose the option on a small gift card sale simply to avoid dealing with the a paper check.

Our Verdict

At the end of the day, I think the biggest strength of this Cardpool option will be for ordinary, non-bulk sellers who want to spruce up their return over the standard gift card exchanges with better rates than Raise. Raise ticked up their rate to a 15% base on all brands for non-bulk sellers. If you’re selling a Best Buy gift card, for example, and want to try to get an increased return, you’ll do much better with Cardpool’s 7% rate over Raise’s 15% rate. You can sell it directly to the exchanges and get, say, 88%, or you can try the Cardpool marketplace to push up your return to 90%+. It comes, of course, with the added float time until sale and the risk of the card not selling.

Conversely, those with strong Raise relationships or who have access to private exchanges with strong payout rates probably won’t find the Cardpool Marketplace option very compelling. Might still be useful for select brands which those other places aren’t taking.

Even some bulk-sellers on Raise can do better with Cardpool on top brands, but they do need to consider their overall volume requirements to remain in the Raise bulk-seller program and/or to keep the bulk rates they get.

More research still needs to be done on what rates and tools Cardpool offer to bulk sellers.

Related:

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

43 Comments
newest
oldest most voted

AKJohnny
AKJohnny (@guest_781719)
July 11, 2019 13:51

Cardpool = trash. I got 2x AA $100 gift cards for BOA premium rewards card annual travel credit in January… I listed both in January and after a LONG time I sold the first one and I did get the Amazon gift card…. the second one sat pending for 2 months (I chose next day payment for Amazon) so I pulled it off and listed on Raise… I just cashed out today $84 for $100 gift card… I will never do business with cardpool again.. also they used to have a kiosk in my local Kroger but that has since disappeared.

P
P (@guest_781715)
July 11, 2019 13:37

I’ve tried selling to this site three times and they’ve canceled my transactions without explanation. Of course they’ll gladly process my orders if I buy but not if I sell.

Ryan
Ryan (@guest_770992)
June 17, 2019 14:28

I sold Cardpool a number of legitimate gift cards online.
They refused every transaction, stole my balances, and sent me the following email.
If you are naive enough to do business with Cardpool, you will likely receive this exact form email.:
” Dear X,

We recently received your gift card code transaction but our processing center encountered an issue while processing your cards.

Our risk assessment team has determined that we aren’t able to accept the transaction at this time. We have cancelled the transaction and are returning ownership of the gift cards to you. Unfortunately, we’re not able to disclose any further specifics regarding this process.

We apologize for any inconvenience to you.

Best regards,
Customer Support
Cardpool.com

SCAM! Scam! SCAM! Scam! SCAM! Scam! SCAM! Scam! SCAM! Scam! SCAM! Scam!

Tom
Tom (@guest_621904)
July 25, 2018 19:19

I can’t recommend cardpool for selling. I tried listing a Jimmy John’s gift card I got via the Wells Fargo Cashback deal. I used the listing with Amazon gift card payment at cardpool since it seemed like it would net the most $$. Everything went fine and it was listed and sold, but then it was promptly cancelled. It was something about the balance, which was fine. Jimmy Johns gift cards have three numbers on them; card number, business ID, and pin. The field when entering it cardpool only had two card number and pin. I had added the BID to the end of the card number since that was the only way it would take it.

Took a week to finally get an answer from their customer service about what happened. Turns out the rep who cancelled it didn’t know how those cards were supposed to be entered and I did it right. They relisted it and it sold again. I kept getting emails about shipping it and to print the label, but there was nothing in my account except the cancelled transaction. Took a week to get a reply from their customer service again. They said couldn’t print the label because of the cancelled transaction but sent me a packing slip with address and told me to ship it and pay for shipping. I did and now three weeks from the initial sale date I am still getting daily reminder emails to ship the card. Haven’t been paid and haven’t heard from cardpool customer service in two weeks despite multiple attempts to contact them.

SOZ
SOZ (@guest_616518)
July 13, 2018 05:18

On 7/7/18, I sold $126 ( face value) giftcards on Cardpool instantly/cash via Lemoney.
On 11/4/18, I will receive $10.04 Turbo Cashback from Lemoney.
I am not a bulk seller and the float isn’t bothersome IMHO.

Jason Smith
Jason Smith (@guest_616420)
July 12, 2018 20:37

Personally, I had poor experiences with Raise. I sold maybe 5 or 6 cards last year, and it took at least 3 to 4 days for each one to go live. The last straw was when I bought a hotels.com gift card from them and then realized afterwards the hotel I wanted to use couldn’t be paid for with a hotels.com gift card. When I tried to resell the gift card back on raise, they said hotels.com gift cards is restricted to selling only by bulk sellers. I have not bought or sold anything on raise since then – they have lost my business.

AN
AN (@guest_616365)
July 12, 2018 18:42

Their risk assesment team rejected my gift cards and provided no reasoning or resolution. You’re just SOL once they do that.

Frank
Frank (@guest_616362)
July 12, 2018 18:32

Tried directly selling to Cardpool. Took my card for 3 days and then claimed they “couldn’t verify” so negative experience here.

MaxPower
MaxPower (@guest_616341)
July 12, 2018 16:57

My last transaction with CardPool ended with a risk rejection when trying to sell some Caleblas GCs that I had the physical cards to. The GC numbers were sent electronically.

“Dear ______

We recently received your gift card code transaction but our processing center encountered an issue while processing your cards.

Our risk assessment team has determined that we aren’t able to accept the transaction at this time. We have cancelled the transaction and are returning ownership of the gift cards to you. Unfortunately, we’re not able to disclose any further specifics regarding this process.

We apologize for any inconvenience to you.

Best regards,
Customer Support
Cardpool.com”

I immediately used up the cards on random merch and then returned on a brand new gift card. Then, I sold the card to Card Kangaroo who accepted the card and paid me after verification of funds.

I had sold gift cards for years to CardPool for small and large amounts and always had the check sent without issues until this last transaction. Turned me off from CardPool. Thankfully, I don’t get into GC selling unless I’m trying to meet MSR.

Jim
Jim (@guest_616350)
July 12, 2018 17:48

Just FYI you can buy Cabelas gift cards with cabelas gift cards

Ryan
Ryan (@guest_616335)
July 12, 2018 16:23

My e gift card listings typically get approved same day. I’ve had no problems similar to other users.