Buyer’s Groups for Gift Cards
Previously, we discussed Buyer’s Groups as a way to generate spending on your credit card. We reviewed what Buyer’s Groups are, how to use them safely, and what our favorite groups are. However, we saw that there is a certain degree of risk with shipping items across the country and relying on third parties to hold up their end of the transaction.
In this post, we’ll discuss a specific category of Buyer’s Group that mitigates many of these issues - Gift card Buyer’s Groups.
What are Gift Card Buyer’s Groups?
Similar to normal Buyer’s Groups, this manufactured spending (MS) play involves you purchasing items and reselling them to the group. However, unlike a traditional Buyer’s Group, these do not involve any shipping element, which is was primary risk factor for those groups. With these Gift Card groups, you purchase (physical or digital) gift cards when they are on discount (think Lowe’s, Home Depot, etc). Then, you can share the gift card number with the group through their online platform, and they will refund you whatever amount you spent on the card.
How do these groups work?
Similar to traditional groups, they will send e-mail/Slack channel notifications when gift cards are on sale. You do need to commit to the purchase quickly, as they often have quotas on how many gift cards they will buy. In cases where you can buy unlimited volumes of gift cards, I’ve seen these quotas fill up within minutes, so it’s important to have your notifications on for these.
What are the best groups?
My recommended groups are: The Card Bay and Aligned Incentives. Both of these are well known and reliable. However, they can take some time to be approved, so I suggest you go ahead and sign-up right away. Both of these groups have mostly deals that are break-even.
The Card Bay
The Card Bay maintains an online platform that allows users to digitally submit their gift card information. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can select among a bunch of common companies that sell gift cards. If you have a gift card for any of those companies, you can sell The Card Bay your gift card.
Submission of your gift card information is simple - you just need to fill in your card info and PIN, if the gift card comes with one. Certain sensitive brands will require you to submit proof-of-purchase as well.
How much can I spend with these groups?
You should be able to easily hit at least $5K per month with these groups. Additionally, most of the deals will be break-even!
What are the downsides?
This probably won’t be an issue to most, especially if you are starting out, but the primary downside that I have experienced with this play is that it is hard to scale up the monthly spend amount more than $5K-$10K. With gift cards, retailers typically set a fixed quantity that can be purchased from one account. For most resellers, it is not possible to create secondary accounts, especially if you want to use the same credit card across those accounts.
Besides that, I think this play is one of the most risk-free, beginner-friendly MS plays that exist out there.
