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:

• Gift Card Reselling in 2018 and Beyond
• The Complete Guide to Selling your Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash