How to Sell Gift Cards for Cash in the UK (2026 Guide)

Roughly every household in Britain has one: a gift card in a drawer, given with good intentions, for a shop you never visit. It has an expiry date, it earns nothing, and it quietly loses value every year it sits there.

You can turn it into money. Here is how the process actually works in the UK, what a fair rate looks like in 2026, and — more importantly — how to avoid the traps that catch people selling cards for the first time.

What you can realistically expect to get

Nobody pays 100% of face value. The buyer takes on the risk that a card is empty, stolen, or already spent, and they need a margin to make that worthwhile. Anyone promising you the full amount is either about to disappoint you or about to defraud you.

Realistic rates depend heavily on the brand. Cards that are easy to resell — gaming credit, in particular — command the most:

Card	Rate at GiftCasher
Steam	90%
Razer Gold	90%
Amazon	89%
iTunes / App Store	84%
Xbox	84%
PlayStation (PSN)	84%
Google Play	74%
Nintendo eShop	74%
Netflix, eBay, Uber, IKEA and similar	74%

The pattern is consistent across the market: digital gaming credit has deep, liquid global demand, so it holds its value. A gift card for a single high-street chain has a much narrower pool of buyers, and the rate reflects that.

A £100 Steam card is therefore worth about £90 in cash. A £100 Netflix card is worth about £74. That gap is not arbitrary — it is the resale market being honest with you.

Getting paid in pounds, not dollars

This is the detail most people miss, and it costs them real money.

Plenty of exchanges are built for the US market and quote everything in dollars. Sell them a £100 card and they will convert it to USD somewhere in the pipeline — usually at a rate a percentage point or two worse than the real one, and usually without telling you. On a single card the loss is small. Across several, it adds up to more than the difference between a good rate and a mediocre one.

At GiftCasher a sterling card pays into a sterling balance, and a PayPal withdrawal pays you in sterling. Nothing is converted. A £100 Steam card gives you £90, and £90 is what lands.

The one exception is crypto, and we are upfront about it: USDT, ETH and BTC settle against the US dollar. If you choose to cash out to a crypto wallet, your pound balance is converted to dollars — and we show you the exchange rate and the exact dollar figure before you confirm, not afterwards. If you want pounds, take PayPal.

The process, step by step

1. Check the rate first. Use the calculator before you commit to anything. It shows the exact payout for your card and amount. No sign-up needed.
2. Create an account and submit the card. You enter the card code, the value, and optionally a photo of the card.
3. Wait for verification. A person checks that the code is valid and that the balance matches what you said. This takes up to 24 hours, though most clear a good deal sooner. Until it clears, the payout sits as a pending balance — it is not yours yet.
4. Get paid. Once the card is accepted, the money moves to your available balance, and you can withdraw it to PayPal or crypto.

Two numbers worth knowing: the smallest card we accept is £20, and the smallest withdrawal is £50. If you only have one small card, you may need a second before you can cash out.

Why verification takes time — and why that is a good sign

Instant payout sounds appealing. It is also the single clearest signal that a buyer is not checking anything.

Gift cards are the favourite instrument of fraudsters precisely because they move fast and are hard to trace. A buyer that pays out in thirty seconds is not verifying that your card is real, has a balance, or was lawfully obtained — which means their business is absorbing a great deal of fraud, which means their rates must be worse to cover it, or they will not be around long enough to pay you at all.

A short wait while a human looks at the card is what allows the rate to be 90% rather than 60%.

Selling safely: what to watch for

The market for gift cards attracts a great deal of criminality, and sellers are targeted as often as buyers.

Never sell a card someone else asked you to buy. This is the money mule pattern, and it is by far the most common scam aimed at people in your position. It arrives as a job offer, a romance, an "investment opportunity", or a friend in a jam. You are asked to buy gift cards, or to receive them, and cash them out and forward the money. Doing so is a criminal offence in the UK even if you genuinely did not know the money was stolen. If any part of your reason for selling a card involves passing the proceeds to someone you have not met, stop.

Never give a card code to someone over the phone. HMRC does not accept gift cards. Neither does the DVLA, the police, your energy supplier, or anyone else who telephones to tell you that you owe them money urgently. Every single one of those calls is a scam, without exception.

Keep your receipt. It is the most useful thing you can have if a card is ever queried, and it takes no effort.

If you have been the victim of fraud, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040.

Is the money taxable?

Selling an unwanted gift card that was given to you, for less than its face value, is not income — you are disposing of a personal asset at a loss. For almost everyone doing this a couple of times a year, there is nothing to declare.

If you are buying and reselling cards regularly and at volume, that starts to look like trading, and the answer changes. That is a conversation for an accountant or HMRC, not a blog post.

The short version

Check the rate before you commit. Expect 90% for Steam, around 84% for the big console brands, and less for narrow retail cards. Insist on being paid in pounds unless you actively want dollars. Accept that a short verification wait is what a legitimate buyer looks like. And never, ever cash out a card on someone else's behalf.

Check what your card is worth — it takes about ten seconds, and you do not need an account to look.