Here’s some Target and Walmart gift card experiments. Mostly failures, but one mild success story.
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Visa Gift Cards at Target.com
Target recently started carrying Visa gift cards online at target.com. The highest denomination is $100 Visa gift card, for a cost of $106.
I wondered if we can liquidate Target gift cards by purchasing Visa gift cards online. In my experience, Target Visa gift cards (purchased in-store) are PINable and can easily be liquidated.
I added a Visa gift card to my cart and paid with Target gift cards. At first everything seemed to be going just fine. The order went through properly and I received the regular order confirmation.
Exactly one minute later, I received an order cancellation from Target.
I didn’t even bother calling up since I’m fairly confident that the cancellation was due to using a Target gift card to buy a Visa gift card.
For now, Target is like the old Staples site (before it was updated) that the system will allow using a gift card to purchase a gift card, but it gets cancelled afterward. The site will probably get updated to not allow the order to be placed at all.
In-Store
But why not purchase Visa gift cards in a Target store and liquidate that way? In-store they also have $100 Visa gift cards (or is there also a $200?) – why not go that route?
In-store, Target is hard-coded not to allow gift cards as payment for Visa gift cards. The screen flashes a message that Target gift cards can’t be used to purchase the Visa gift card.
I tried the old work-around of buying some detergent along with a Visa gift card. We applied my gift card, but the system only used up the amount of the cost of the detergent, and forced me to pay with a credit card for the Visa gift card.
Walmart.com
A while back we said Bye Bye Walmart.com when they stopped allowing gift cards to be used to purchase $200 Visa gift cards.
What about Walmart in-store?
Walmart in-store is a tantalizing possibility since they sell $500 Visa gift cards for $504.95. Can you purchase it with a gift card?
In my experience, you can not. The Walmart POS won’t allow a Visa gift card to be purchased in the same transaction as regular product – it won’t scan. When checked out separately, it’s hard-coded to reject gift cards.
Credit cards, however, should be fine for Walmart in-store gift card purchases, and may even earn “grocery”-category spend, since some Walmart’s are coded as supermarkets. See details on the Visa Supplier Locator here.
I haven’t tried purchasing other third party gift card at target.com or in-store, nor at walmart.com or in-store, so I don’t know if you can use gift cards on those purchases.
Buy Target Gift Card with Target Gift Card
The one small success story that I had was using a Target gift card to purchase a Target gift card.
‘Who cares?’
Suppose you have an e-gift card that you want to turn into a physical gift card. Or suppose you have a bunch of small gift card balances that you want to consolidate.
Walmart.com has long allowed consolidating gift cards – I’ve done it numerous times without a problem. Max gift cards per transaction is 4.
However, we reported a while back that target.com does not allow using a gift card to purchase a gift card. However, that seems to have changed.
We recently reported on a 6-hour Target gift card sale. I had a couple hundred dollars worth of Target gift cards already, but I figured I’d try to pay for the on-sale gift cards with the gift cards that I had. This way, I’d get the savings locked in without having to lock any more money in.
Worked without a hitch.
Apparently, target.com now allows Target gift cards to be purchased with Target gift cards, which could be useful occasionally. Max gift cards per transaction is 4.
Final Thoughts
Target gift cards are anyway very valuable for their resale value, so even if we’d be able to buy $100 Visa for $106, it wouldn’t be hugely exciting. As mentioned walmart.com used to allow the purchase of $200 Visa gift cards with gift cards. Since it was the higher $200 denomination, the fees were less as a percentage, and it was a little more interesting.
I anyway shop at Target regularly, so I have no problem using up Target gift cards. I tried the Visa gift card purchase more out of curiosity. Failed.
But it’s nice to know that we can now use Target gift cards to buy Target gift cards.
View Comments (14)
I purchased VGC on from Target.com for $200 & $400 with a credit card. My question is are these usable to load Redbird, Bluebird or Serve now?
yes they are... with a workaround i've been able to do this plenty of times.
Well that's vague, care to share the workaround? But with Serve in any form largely dead, does it matter as well?
With a credit card ^
I'm surprised. I've never done it myself, but I've seen reports that it works. You mean to say that the register stopped you, not the cashier. Correct?
Well....
Couple months ago it worked with a $100 visa gift card at wal-mart
But when I tired it $500 the register won't process the order. Maybe anything over $100 it won't go thur. I could save some money buying $500 gift cards at wal-mart which only cost $4.95 vs. $5.95 at Krogers....
If you get different results could you post them up ?
I tired to buy a $500 visa gift card at walmart it won't accept the transaction
In my experience, Cashiers don't ask to see match your name of ID when you buy $500 VGCs, so I was able to liquidate some of my recent Amex Gift Cards I had.
Great! You mean at Walmart?
Yes at Walmart. I have bought 3 VGCs and then used them for Serve load at same store (not same day though). Walmart's VGCs has card's last 4 digits as PIN, and automatically takes them as Debit.
Did you buy a Vanilla Gift Card Visa or Mastercard ?
They won't let me buy at $300 or $500 in my area. (Ohio)
You can set a pin for Vanilla gift cards by going to Krogers or another store and buy anything you want and select debit. Type in any pin you want. Go to the Vanilla gift card site on how to do this.
Don't you need to register Walmart Visa gc's online first before using? Or maybe I'm making that up?
Moreover, Target VGCs and MCGCs are very difficult to liquidate.
Really? I once had success using the PIN at Walmart. I don't remember how I set the PIN. Maybe by calling in.