Transferring money from Visa gift card to an account

[bluemoonKY]

I use Visa gift cards to pay for items that I buy online. These Visa gift card are debit cards. When I first buy these Visa gift cards, the Visa gift cards usually have $50 or $100 on them. I use these Visa gift cards to make purchases until the value of the card is too low to buy anything else. I now have dozens of these VIsa gift cards with a small amount of money on them such as $3 or $5. If I was able to combine the remaining funds on all these remaining cards, it would be a substantial amount of money. However, these mostly depleted cards are just about useless to me alone.I thought that paypal was the solution, but I finally opened a paypal account today. And I found out that paypal won't work. At paypal, one can only load money from a bank account or from one of PayPal's "My Cash" cards.

Is there any way that I can pool the money from all these individual cards into one account?

 

[Borek]

I doubt you can transfer the money, but I would look for a place where it is possible to pay with more than one card for a single purchase.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

At best there are sites that will buy your gift card for sometimes up to 90% of the value.

 

[Helios]

I once had 3 gift cards like that for a bookstore. I had them, went to the store and said I want to buy a single gift card. After that I went back and asked for a refund. The manager was called. It didn't seem they had a policy for this. I got the cash, but I don't think they liked what I did.

 

[jackwhirl]

I've never had difficulty using up a gift card. If you can't use them online, brick and mortar retailers can definitely complete a single transaction with multiple payment types. Take them along the next time you go grocery shopping and just keep swiping.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Many online places will let you use multiple gift cards.

 

[bluemoonKY]

Many online places will let you use multiple gift cards.

Please name some then.

 

[vela]

I've never had difficulty using up a gift card. If you can't use them online, brick and mortar retailers can definitely complete a single transaction with multiple payment types. Take them along the next time you go grocery shopping and just keep swiping.

If you have a lot of cards, you may not want to use them up all on one transaction, especially if people are waiting in line behind you.

 

[Mark44]

Please name some then.

Amazon is one, and I'm sure there are others. I made one purchase with an Amazon gift card plus a Visa debit card.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

Please name some then.

As Mark noted, Amazon will allow stacking of numerous debit "gift" cards. You may want to try your luck there, I don't think very many other online companies have options for multiple debit transactions, a company gift card is different and could be stacked at most check-outs (you are given the option to specify a gift card amount). I think you are spending too much on fees by buying so many cards: I assume it costs $4 to load, that adds up when you have done it dozens of times! If you are trying to remain anonymous or want to protect your banking information, then I highly recommend using an identity protection service likehttps://www.abine.com/index.html, choose between either a one-time fee per card or you can purchase the membership for $50 or so a year, allowing free virtual card generations. Anytime you are purchasing online you simply buy a new virtual card at Blur beforehand, for the exact amount anticipated, it will generate a one-time credit card number to use only for that specific website. You can either keep your name and address, or use one the company provides (things like services or donations that don't require shipping). It does require a multi-stage identity and banking verification process to start though, which prevents fraudulent uses of their services. I don't think it will allow you to combine a few dozen prepaid cards, but after you redeem all those, it might be a good idea to prevent a similar future dilemma! I recall doing the prepaid route in the past, but there are better ways nowadays to protect yourself!

 

[Evo]

Have you looked into cards that allow you to keep reloading them when they start to run out? I don't know what your reason is behind buying these gift cards, but maybe you should do some shopping around.

 

[jackwhirl]

Have you looked into cards that allow you to keep reloading them when they start to run out? I don't know what your reason is behind buying these gift cards, but maybe you should do some shopping around.

I'm not the OP, but its probably a security thing. If the merchant turns out to be less scrupulous than expected, the stolen card number doesn't link back to anything except a depleted debit account that can't be overdrawn.