What is the cheapest way to cash out Visa Gift Cards?

[Anonymous]

In the past few years I've taken out money from my cards for business this way and never had any problems buying money orders from USPS or Walmart for large amounts but now both Walmart and USPS have stopped accepting these prepaid debit cards. I took out 40k because in Puerto Rico I know the USPS was accepting these for money orders up until end of last year so I figured I'd fly over there and cash them... nope... they've now joined other parts of the country and won't take them. I didn't do it for points so I'm willing to lose a percentage at this point but what would you guys say is the lease expensive way to turn these into dollars? I can buy gold online and sell them back to the merchant but thats about 10% loss. I think I've seen websites that offer to buy them but they're about the same amount. Are they at least safe to work with?

Can I send Western Union to myself using these and would the fee's be less since they can be used as debit cards?

 Mod cut - this cannot be discussed here 

[DaveInAZ]

The 2nd Stimulus payment to me last year was mailed to me as a pre-paid debit card. I just went to PNC Bank and had them debit the card for the full amount and deposit it into my checking account. No fee, no hassle. 

[creditfan]

prepaid your bills

in my case; phone, electric, water bills and more

[FinStar]

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@DaveInAZ wrote:

The 2nd Stimulus payment to me last year was mailed to me as a pre-paid debit card. I just went to PNC Bank and had them debit the card for the full amount and deposit it into my checking account. No fee, no hassle. 

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While that may be the case for stimulus payments based on the type of payment card from the IRS, a variety of Visa/MC gift cards (or similar instruments) may have restrictive methods to withdraw cash. Some don't allow it. It depends on who the issuer is for said Visa gift cards and the T&C's associated with those cards for how/where they can be used.

[disdreamin]

If you are saying you're trying to do this with $40k worth of Visa gift cards, I'd worry about being flagged no matter how I accomplished it. That said, online casinos are the first thing that come to mind but, with amounts as large as I think you're talking about, it starts to smell a bit like money laundering if the whiff I got was accurate. [Mods, I hope this is alright to note - I'm not saying that is what is going on here, but that it might look like that to an outside observer]

Is there no way to use these to pay normal expenses rather than trying to turn them into cash? Granted, it might take a while to completely use them, depending on your normal spend, but it seems like using them for organic spend might be simplest.

[ghgirll40]

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@disdreamin wrote:

If you are saying you're trying to do this with $40k worth of Visa gift cards, I'd worry about being flagged no matter how I accomplished it. That said, online casinos are the first thing that come to mind but, with amounts as large as I think you're talking about, it starts to smell a bit like money laundering if the whiff I got was accurate. [Mods, I hope this is alright to note - I'm not saying that is what is going on here, but that it might look like that to an outside observer]

Is there no way to use these to pay normal expenses rather than trying to turn them into cash? Granted, it might take a while to completely use them, depending on your normal spend, but it seems like using them for organic spend might be simplest.

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As someone who has worked in the financial industry for 9 years I definitely agree with this!

[kremonis]

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@DaveInAZ wrote:

The 2nd Stimulus payment to me last year was mailed to me as a pre-paid debit card. I just went to PNC Bank and had them debit the card for the full amount and deposit it into my checking account. No fee, no hassle. 

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@DaveInAZ 

Interesting. Could you clarify please? Let's start with these definitions:

1. Debit card: connected an funded by bank account.

2. Pre-Paid debit card: prepaid cards aren't preloaded and instead require you to load money onto the card. Example: Bluebird from Amex, Go Prepaid from NFCU

3. Gift Cards: non reloadable cards that are preloaded with a set amount. There word "gift card" always appears on the card itself.

I have never had a problem buying money orders, getting an over the counter withdrawals, or ATM transaction from definitions 1 and 2.

Are you saying that the "2nd Stimulus payment" was an actual gift card under definition 3 and PNC cash it out for you? If the answer is "yes'" was this a one-off courtesy or does PNC offer this service all the time?

[ccquest]

There's options like r/giftcardexchange on reddit and depending on how much you spend on Amazon, you can likely redeem it to your account there. You could then buy things like normal using a **bleep** ton of Amazon credit or buy other types of credit off r/giftcardexchange using the Amazon credit. Plenty of other exchange type options too I suppose, but usually I just cash out my Visa gift cards on Amazon when they're around $1.00 or so.

[IntegerIntrovert]

You flew to a US territory to Cash $40k of prepaid cards? I personally wouldn't post about that publicly.