We often talk about opportunities of buying and selling merchant gift cards as a way of earning money and racking up credit card points in the process. It’s not for everyone and it can often have hiccups along the way.
Today I bumped into an odd way of using a merchant gift card, with a service by PayGarden who facilitates the use of merchant gift cards as a substitute to ordinary credit card payments. PayGarden deals with merchants, not with consumers, and enables them to accept merchant gift cards as a form of payment.
One featured partner of PayGarden is PrivateInternetAccess, a company which provides an anonymous IP address to customers as a way of maintaining privacy. Such customers often want to remain completely anonymous and don’t want to give in their registered credit card to pay for the service. Being able to pay with a merchant gift card allows customers to keep their privacy (though Visa or Mastercard gift cards should be able to do the same).
Another partner is prizeo.com, a charity website. An easy way of contributing to charity can be to give them your unwanted merchant gift cards. Many other charities accept merchant gift cards as well, such as Goodwill and many more. Just google it to find your favorite charity.
Pymnts.com reports that second-hand clothing website Twice now accepts merchant gift cards in exchange for an in-store credit.
We reported that the Walmart/CardCash partnership which allowed trading in of many merchant gift cards for Walmart gift cards has ended. You can still trade in many merchant gift cards for Amazon gift cards on Cardpool.com and on Cardcash.com.
It’s interesting to see new uses of merchant gift cards as they become more a form of currency, as opposed to a credit limited to the particular merchant that issued the card.
