How selling a gift card to Unspent works
Selling a gift card to Unspent is deliberately short: you tell us the brand and the balance, we tell you what we will pay, and if you accept we verify the card and send the money. There is no listing, no buyer to vet, and no waiting to see whether a payment clears. Below is the whole process, including the parts that happen on our side after you submit.
1. Find your brand
Search the brand on the front of the card. The dropdown tells you immediately whether we buy it and at what rate, before you enter anything else. We buy 419 brands; the 21 we decline each have a page explaining why, because a vague refusal is not useful to anyone. If your card is one of those, you will know in a second rather than after filling in a form.
2. Enter the balance
Type what is actually left on the card, to the cent. The offer counts up live as you type at that brand's rate, so you see the exact number before going any further. Every brand has a minimum and a per-card maximum, and if your balance falls outside that window the page says so straight away rather than failing at the end.
3. Add the card number and PIN
We need the full number and the PIN because that is the only way to confirm the balance with the brand — it is the same check a till performs. Those details are encrypted at rest and visible only to the verification admin. You also confirm that the card is yours to sell and that you have not already spent it, which is the one thing we cannot verify for you.
4. Pick how you get paid
PayPal or Cash App are initiated within 24 hours. A paper check takes 5 to 7 business days. There is no bank transfer option, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight — ACH pulls in a whole layer of reversal risk that would make the rate worse for everyone. You will see an estimated arrival date, calculated around weekends, before you confirm.
5. We verify the balance
A person checks the card against the brand's own records. If it reads exactly what you entered, the payment goes out. If it reads lower — which happens often, usually because a card was part-spent and forgotten — we recalculate at the same rate and show you the corrected offer before anything moves. You can decline and keep the card. If it reads zero, we reject it, tell you what came back, and charge you nothing.
6. The money arrives, and we hold the card for 30 days
After paying we keep the card on file for 30 days. That is so a disputed balance can be traced from both sides rather than becoming your word against ours. After that window the record is cleared.