How to Check a Gift Card Balance in the UK

Half the gift cards in Britain's drawers are part-spent. You bought something for £32 with a £50 voucher, forgot the rest existed, and now you have no idea whether it holds eighteen pounds or nothing at all.

Before you spend it — or sell it — it is worth finding out. Here is how, brand by brand, followed by the honest answer for the cards where you cannot check without redeeming.

The important distinction

There are two different situations, and most articles about this quietly blur them.

A card you have already redeemed has become a balance on an account. Checking it is easy: log in and look.

A card you have not redeemed is just a code on a piece of plastic. For many digital brands there is genuinely no way to check it without redeeming it — and redeeming it locks the credit to your account permanently. That matters, because a redeemed code cannot be sold. Once it is on your Apple ID, it is yours forever, whether you wanted it or not.

So: do not redeem a card just to find out what is on it, unless you have decided to keep it.

Cards you can check without redeeming

Amazon.co.uk — Sign in and go to Your Account → Gift cards. Any balance already applied shows there. To check an unredeemed voucher you will need to apply it, which adds it to your balance for good.

Most physical retail cards (high street shops, restaurant chains, department stores) print a card number and PIN on the back, and the retailer runs a balance checker on its website. Search for the brand plus "gift card balance". These are the easiest of the lot, because the whole point of a physical card is that you can check it in store or online without burning it.

In store — for any physical card, the till can check the balance in seconds. This is the most reliable method and costs you nothing but a walk.

Xbox — go to redeem.microsoft.com and enter the 25-character code. The screen shows you the value before you confirm the redemption. Read the value, then close the tab without confirming if you intend to sell.

Google Play — play.google.com/redeem behaves similarly: it will tell you the value before it applies it.

Cards you cannot check without redeeming

Be aware of these, because it is the trap:

Apple / iTunes — there is no public balance checker for an unredeemed Apple gift card. The only way to know what is on it is to redeem it, at which point it becomes an Apple ID balance and can no longer be sold. If you want to sell an Apple card, sell it on its face value.

Steam — a wallet code cannot be inspected without activating it. Once activated, the credit is in your Steam wallet, permanently, and cannot be transferred out or resold.

PlayStation (PSN) — the same. The code is either unredeemed and unknowable, or redeemed and yours.

For all three, the rule is simple: if you intend to sell, do not redeem "just to check".

What if I genuinely do not know the balance?

This is more common than people admit, and it is not a problem.

When you sell us a card, a person checks the actual balance during verification. If a card turns out to hold less than you told us, we do not penalise you and we do not cancel the order — we pay the same rate on whatever is genuinely there, and we tell you the real figure before crediting your account.

So if you are unsure, put down the face value and let verification find the truth. Overstating it gains you nothing, but it costs you nothing either.

What you should not do is guess low. If you say a card holds £20 when it actually holds £80, you have not protected yourself from anything — you have just made the process slower.

While you are at it: check the expiry

Gift cards expire. Most UK cards run for 12 to 24 months from purchase, and the date is usually in the small print on the back rather than anywhere obvious.

If the card is close to expiry, you have a decision to make and not much time to make it. Spending it is worth 100% of the balance. Selling it is worth whatever the rate is for that brand. Letting it lapse is worth nothing at all, which is what happens to a great deal of gift card money every year.

We wrote about expiry dates and your rights separately, including the uncomfortable question of what happens to your card if the retailer goes into administration.

Once you know the balance

If you are keeping the card, good — spending it at face value beats selling it every time.

If you are not going to use it, check what it is worth. Steam and Razer Gold pay 90%, Amazon 89%, Apple and the consoles 84%, and most retail cards 74%. Part-used cards are fine, and there is no penalty for them.