Hack for Using Every Penny of a Visa Gift Card on Amazon.com


Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my hack for using Visa gift cards on Amazon without having to strategically plan purchases for the exact amount of the gift card.

This year, the rebate for my contact purchases was in the form of an electronic Visa card.  I find Visa gift cards super annoying to use.  First, I have to remember that I even have them to spend.  Then it generally okay for the first purchase on the gift card, but after that, I have to remember how much I have left on it and, if it's less than the full purchase, I have to be in a place that will allow you to use several different cards for the same purchase.  Annoying. 

Electronic Visa cards take this annoyance to a new level.  First of all, it was easy enough to add to my Amazon account as a new payment method.  And I went ahead and used it for my first purchase -- which was $71.76 for Nespresso pods.  But when I went to use it for another purhcase, since I only had $28.24 on the card and the purchase was for more than that, Amazon wouldn't take it.  I thought maybe they would use the remainder of the card and then use my default payment method, but no dice -- they just refused it since it didn't have enough money on it.  So, now I'm stuck trying to figure out exactly what purchase to make that is going to be under, but super close to $28.24??  Ugh.  I'm ultimately going to forget that I have this and leave a bunch of money on the card before it expires in 6 months. 

Until I figured out this hack!  Amazon does not let you use multiple credit cards for a single purchase BUT it does allow you to use a gift card plus another payment method.  So, what I did for this $28.24 left on my card is use it to purchase an Amazon gift card.  Search for Amazon eGift Card and click on this product.  You can see that they allow you to choose the amount and the great thing is that it doesn't even need to be in even dollars.  So, I pick standard gift card, plug in my amount $28.24, enter my own email address and set it to delivery immediately.  Then I add this to my cart.  Now, once I'm in the cart -- I need to make sure that I choose the payment method of this electronic Visa card and purchase.  Okay -- there is still one last step.  I go to my email inbox and look for the Amazon gift card email.  Then, from this email, I choose to apply it to my Amazon account.  Now, when I make a purchase on Amazon, it automatically takes the money first from my gift card balance and, if that's not quite enough, it then charges my default payment method. 

In the future, I would do this from the beginning. I would add this Visa card as a payment method and then immediately purchase an Amazon Gift Card for that same amount and apply it to my account.  Then I wouldn't have to worry about remembering to use it or trying to figure out which purchase to use it on.  Plus, this hack allows you to use every penny of your Visa gift card rather than have to strategize to find a purchase that matches up with your balance.  I have another video where I discuss how I account for purchases made with Amazon gift cards or store credits in my budgeting system YNAB if you are interested.  Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

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