What’s the Deal with Paypal Digital Gifts?

Background

Many people like buying gift cards from Paypal Digital Gifts (PPDG) since these purchases have been working to earn 5x on the Chase INK cards as part of the Utilities category.

There are many gift card sales on eBay, and PPDG is one of the popular vendors of these sales. Coupled with 5x rewards, these deals can be very lucrative.

The hurdle we encounter is that PPDG enforces a vague purchase limit, and stops us from buying too many e-gift cards. Ordinary Paypal transactions don’t have these limits, only e-gift cards bought from PPDG do.

When bumping into PPDG limits, the checkout system won’t tell us what the limits are or even that we bumped into a limit at all. When the error messages begin popping up, it becomes clear that you’ve met your limit.

Verifications

Usually, you can do some Paypal verifications and push through another couple of transactions. Eventually, however, the system will stop processing your e-gift card purchases completely.

The Paypal verification system is somewhat broken, especially for PPDG purchases made on eBay, and you might have to go through the same verification multiple times until it gets accepted.

Pro Tip: Make sure your chosen payment method (INK) is set up as the default payment method, and this will save you one of the verification hoops (you’ll only need two verifications instead of three).

Current Limits

While different people experience varying limits, the most common one we hear is the $250/$400 limit.

You’ll be able to push through up to $250 (or perhaps $300) worth of gift card without needing verification, especially if you split up the purchase into smaller transactions (e.g. three transactions of $80 each).

After that, PPDG will allow another couple hundred dollars worth, up to $400 or $500, by going through the verification process.

A few points to keep in mind:

• The system will reset after 24-hours (exactly) and allow you to purchase another $250.
• The 24-hour reset doesn’t usually work for the $400 limit, only the $250 limit. So if you buy $250 or $400 one day, you should be able to buy another $250 the next day, but probably not $400. After enough days of inactivity, the $400 limit will reset.
• When buying discounted gift cards, it’s the discounted price that counts. For example, you should be able to buy three $100 gift cards for $80 each since the cost of the gift cards altogether is less than $250.

If the system glitches out on you or if you want to try pushing past these numbers, making smaller transactions helps. Consider buying three $100 gift cards in three separate transactions, for example, instead of checking them all out at once.

Just beware that if you have a bonus Bucks offer, there will sometimes be a minimum $50 or $100 purchase threshold to get the bonus.

Direct PPDG

Aside from selling on eBay, PPPD also sells directly on their site paypal-gifts.com. It wouldn’t ever make sense to buy direct if you can buy it from PPDG on eBay since using eBay will yield you eBay Bucks and a shopping portal bonus.

But PPDG/direct purchases still make sense for their sales (here’s an example) or if you find something available directly which isn’t available from PPDG/eBay.

The good news is that PPDG/direct purchases have also been working to get 5x with INK.

The bad news? PPDG/direct also has the same velocity limits as PPDG/eBay. You’ll be able to push through around $250 worth or a bit more with verifications, and then the system will stop further purchases.

To end on a positive note, I recently learned that the limits from PPDG/eBay and PPDG/direct do not combine. You’ll get the $250-$400 limits on each one separately.

PPDG limits have evolved over time (1,2, 3), and we certainly might see changes over time. See also these 33 Things to Know about eBay and Paypal.