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Comment by andrewaylett

3 days ago

It's interesting (to me, at least) to see the kinds of discounts that folk apply to gift card transactions. It's not unheard of for a colleague to end up with a gift card they can't use, and while there's a real sense in which the card is worth its face value, there's also a sense in which its restricted use makes it worth less than face value. Plus, if you want to spend £x in a shop then you don't normally need to buy a colleague's gift card.

9 comments

andrewaylett

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bombcar  3 days ago

A gift card is always worth less than cash, how much depends on various factors.

At least 5% (rewards and inconvenience) but closer to 10-15% in my experience.

For a 20% discount on stores I use regularly I’ll get the gift card (usually buy $50 get $10 free).

  • andrewaylett  2 days ago

    It is, however, literally worth that amount of cash at the moment of redemption. If you were going to spend that money in that shop anyway, and you have no intent to sell the card to a third party, there's no need to apply a discount.

    It's not all that surprising that "just like cash, but less fungible" should have a different valuation than "cash", but there aren't all that many things that mimic cash like that.

  • Larrikin  3 days ago

    If you look on the gift card market places, like Raise, you will see many gift cards are well below face value but there are also many that are rarely below 1% value like Amazon and Walmart.

  • nlawalker  3 days ago

    A $X Amazon gift card is more valuable to me than $X in cash. As in, if you gave me a choice between the two, I’d take the gift card.

    • bspammer  3 days ago

      I assume you mean literal cash here. I can’t imagine anyone preferring to have $20 in their Amazon wallet over $20 in their bank account

    • nly  2 days ago

      I'd take the cash. I walk past a half dozen cash machines on any given workday where I can deposit the cash in to my bank account and it'll clear and be ready to spend instantaneously.

    • compsciphd  3 days ago

      the first thing I always did when I got a visa (or like) gift card (be it rebate, class action payment et al), was put it into amazon, as it was effectively cashing it out with close to zero friction.