Can you use Amazon gift card to buy another gift card?

According to Amazon’s policy, you cannot use your Amazon gift card to buy another gift card. This is broader than you may think. Most people understand this to mean that you can’t buy another Amazon gift card, and that is true, but in addition to that, — you can’t buy any other gift card such as a Target gift card also.

The Consumerist had this interesting piece about a reader who wasn’t able to use his gift card on something that was discounted by being bundled with another gift card. For example, if Amazon was giving you a $50 gift card on buying a Kindle, — you couldn’t use your existing Amazon gift card to make this purchase.

So, two gift cards don’t go together. In summary, you can’t use it in the following ways:

  1. You can’t use an Amazon gift card to buy another Amazon gift card.
  2. You can’t use it to buy any other gift card.
  3. You can’t use your gift card to buy anything that is discounted by being bundled with a gift card.

At first I was a little surprised at how so many people are interested in swapping gift cards, but as I read more about this, — I realized there are many situations where it makes perfect sense to do this. The reason I found most interesting was to try and get around expiry dates. This of course, isn’t applicable to Amazon any more, since their cards don’t have an expiry date. I read a couple of forum threads where people were discussing about what to do with their cards that were about to expire soon. They were talking about the expiry date coming soon, and since they couldn’t think of buying anything, — they were wondering if they could get another gift card, and in turn — extend their expiry period. I thought this was really clever, but unfortunately it isn’t allowed by most retailers.

It is a good idea to be aware of how you can’t use your gift cards because a lot of times they remain unused, and that is just a waste. Using it to buy another gift card doesn’t work, so if that was something you were planning on, then you need to think of another way of using it.

21 thoughts on “Can you use Amazon gift card to buy another gift card?”

  1. This is so annoying. People keep giving me gift cards for holidays, and I would rather travel than buy stuff I don’t need. But for some reason I’m not allowed to buy an airline gift card? Why? What is it hurting?

  2. Yeah. I just found that out the hard way. I saved $500 in amazon points from my credit cards over the year. I figured I would just buy and email myself gift cards from the balance of my points on my credit cards each month, since it just adds to your balance and the gift card never expires. I have some people that I don’t know what to buy for Christmas and birthdays that I was going to get gift cards for. When I tried to purchase them the gift card balance didn’t even show up. :/ I’m so pissed now. I got all this credit on amazon that I earned that I was going to use on that. But now I’m going to have to spend money out of pocket because I’m still going to get them gift cards since I don’t know what else to get them. It doesn’t make any freakin sense. If I would’ve known that I would’ve just kept the points and used those instead. Why would they make that rule? I guess I’ll end up using it one of these days when I need something. But as for now, I’m SOL.

  3. well, I know this isn’t optimal. AND you won’t get the full amount. But you could open another amazon account, sell lint on it or something no one would buy. or perhaps an over priced normal #2 pencil. log out. log in with your account with the gift card. buy item with gift card. log in to seller account, send item using your own postage, suck it up and accept the seller fee reduced from your total sale. it’s not as much, but it is in the other account (or bank account).

  4. A friend of mine helped me in the time of need and I thought of buying them an e-voucher using my existing balance. Of course, I wasn’t able to and I found out that the T&C’s don’t allow it. I was wondering what was the wisdom behind that rule, and so I ended up on this page.

    Thanks for the succint explanation. It makes perfect sense because, aside from the expiry date reason, the whole point that Amazon even offer e-vouchers is so that the money is spent exclusively on their products rather than using them as a go-between to convert money into a voucher for another retailer.

  5. Well this is just annoying me. I got a $100 gift card for amazon thinking I could buy some new games. I wanted to buy a gamestop gift card and then use it for some sweet games, but amazon won’t let me. And also I can’t purchase anything because I don’t have a credit card on my amazon account and I am not even old enough to have one either! So I have to wait until I am old enough to get one and even then all I want is money in my steam wallet which is from the gamestop gift card that I can’t buy. If I had known this before I redeemed the card I would have returned it to get my money back. I am never getting a gift card for amazon again.

  6. So my question: Is this Amazon applying their own brand of social engineering towards regifting, and telling me how I should manage my gifts or being greedy about maximizing their revenue?

  7. Hi. I will be getting a Amazon Gift Card from mturk.
    Can I use on Junglee.com (an amazon company in India) ?
    Can we use Gift Cards on other than amazon.com?
    There are many sites which say ‘an amazon company’.

    1. I know this post/thread is old, but I thought someone might find it useful. Although you can’t technically do this, there is a way around it and it comes in the form of gifting Kindle Edition books. You can use your gift card balance to buy a Kindle Edition book for someone else. Just deliver it to them via the email/amazon account they wish to have the balance on. When they receive the book, instead of accepting it, just return it. Then it gets converted to a gift card balance and bam, you have successfully transfered your gift card balance. I guess you could technically do it with actual items, but it just gets messy having to deal with shipping. This is much cleaner.

  8. There’s no way to buy a gift card with existing gift card credit – the option for it doesn’t even show up; just wants me to use normal payment methods even though I got boatloads of amazon gift card credit (all from credit card bonus offers). It sucks. I just want to send some to my coworkers for the holidays but no go.

  9. If we redeem first the the gift card into our Amazon account balance, then buy another amazon gift card using the balance, is it possible?

  10. Can you buy one thing with two gift certificates?
    I want to buy Sims 3. and I have one girft voucher £25 and a £15 one, and the game costs £26.50..
    Can I do that?
    🙂

  11. I learned this while Christmas shopping at Amazon. My cart included toys for my grandson and a gift card for his mother. If you include a gift card in your basket the option to apply gift card funds to the purchase is not available.

    If I had your article last week it would have saved me a call to Amazon’s customer support.

      1. I can’t understand why Amazon thinks that the purchases of the original gift card holder would be any more preferable or profitable than purchases made by sub-purchasers of the same gift certificate. What this rule does however is to remind me NOT to give Amazon Gift Certificates as a gift. I will choose a major credit card gift certificate over them as it can be used as cash for any purchases anywhere. In the State of Washington, no gift cards are allowed to have an expiration date or be assigned a dormant fee. If that is not the case in your State, I’d recommend directing that question to your elected officials.

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