For some reason, cash is old-fashioned and now it’s common to give out gift cards in the form of prepaid credit cards. If you have a prepaid Visa, Mastercard, or American Express gift card and you want to use up an odd remaining amount like $3.34 or even $0.56, here are a couple of tips:
- Amazon.com gift codes. Did you know that you can buy an Amazon online gift code for any amount, and for as little as
15now 50 cents? Amazon gift certificates arrive instantly, they never expire, and you can combine many small codes into your account. I prefer this method because I don’t need to leave the house and I know I’ll use it up eventually. 🙂 - Ask for a split tender transaction. Most modern POS systems allow purchases to be split into amounts of any size.
- Pay your cell phone or utility bill. If you have a utility or cell phone company that takes credit cards, it’s often easy to pay the bill in small chunks. I’ve had some problems with these services though, as like gas station pumps they may ask for a pre-authorization before accepting payment.
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I either use the cards up at a gas station, prepay exact amount inside or I send myself a gift code through Amazon.com. I tried using a bunch of them at Walmart only to find out they only accept 4 forms of payment on each transaction, at payment 5 the system would error out and would have to start over. People were hating me in line that day. I put the credit gift cards in front of my other cards so I don’t forget to use them.
I just use up the small balance debit cards at the grocery store. No cost, no hassle.
Thanks for the Amazon heads up!
Ditto about the Amazon idea.
Thanks! I needed to do something with my $.36 Verizon rebate.
Why not just use Amazon payments to cash ’em out? This is ideal for draining small balance prepaid gift cards.
Use them at Target. Target’s POS system can take all the remaining balance out of a gift card or even a payflex card. You can then pay the difference with any other forms of payment. 🙂
Or use Amazon Payments to extract $1000 in rewards a month: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1024148/
Looks like Amazon has raised the minimum from $0.15 to $0.50 for gift codes.
Thanks for the update
I;ve had small amount left on VIsa an American Express gift cards….like 5 bucks,,,,,or in that area….. just pick a charity and donate your balance…..easy enough and a cause gets the extra money.