I ran into a problem recently. I was making a new purchase on Amazon.com, and wanted to zero out a Visa gift card that I had received for Christmas. The problem is that Amazon only allows you to use one credit card per purchase, so there was no way to use the Visa gift card, which only covered part of the price, and then use my main credit card for the balance. There might not be a direct way to use two or more credit cards for an Amazon purchase, but there is a workaround.
The trick involves using an Amazon gift card. At the risk of spelling out the obvious, here is what you need to do:
1. Add your second credit card (in my case, a Visa gift card) to your account as a payment source. You can find this in the “Payment Methods” section of your account, under “Add a Credit or Debit Card”;
2. Buy an Amazon gift card for the amount that you want charged to your second credit card (which in my case was the remaining balance on the gift card). The best method to be able to use the gift card right away is to use the “Email” option under the “Digital” section;
3. Check your email, and copy the code;
4. When you make your purchase, add that code to the purchase.
Voila! A bit of a hack, but this works. Since you can use multiple gift codes with a purchase, this is a good way to zero out any credit card gift cards you have sitting around. If anybody has a better solution, let us know in the comments.
Note: the Amazon gift card link, above, is an affiliate link, meaning that 40Tech gets a small kickback if you use that link to make a purchase.
Mr. K. @ Daily42 says:
I wish there was a similar trick for converting gift card balance from Amazon.com to Amazon.co.uk :) Unfortunately, they don’t allow Amazon affiliate money earned on .com, to be used in other Amazon shops :(
April 18, 2012 — 10:39 am
Kosmo says:
That’s an odd limitation on Amazon’s part. Make it as easy as possible for people to give you money.
April 19, 2012 — 12:02 pm
mjoraid says:
You can’t combine payments sources for the same transaction. It’s just too complicated for banks to handle, that’s why nobody does it.
If a refund is issued, that requires splitting back the amount to each card. What If a card gets declined along the way?
If the same transaction of purchase has more than one item, and the payment was split. Then the customer decided to return it only a single item. Then the would be more than one card to return to, thus, cannot automate the process if the customer is needed to make decision.
I’m not a professional in money things, but these are some of the issue I can pull at the top of my head right now.
I imagine if a pro was asked, a lot of serious issues will arise.
I hope they can fix it all in the future and make stuff easier.
April 13, 2017 — 5:57 pm
mjoraid says:
Therefore, I think it’s not Amazon’s decision, it’s the banking system.
April 13, 2017 — 5:59 pm
Latisha T Crick says:
OMG! Thank you so much! You are a life saver!
April 10, 2018 — 5:33 pm
Ba Tam says:
Actually now Amazon has created a method for their customer to do just that. just go to link below to reload your Amazon balance with all of your prepaid cards & then use it to pay for your purchase/s: https://www.amazon.com/asv/reload/order?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=s9_acss_bw_cg_PrPdLP_3a1_w
May 8, 2017 — 6:23 pm
Jennifer Leigh says:
Thank you! This helps!
September 30, 2017 — 10:10 pm
Dyamond Smith says:
is this for if you already have an amazon gift card?
October 2, 2017 — 12:25 am
JC says:
Evan you are a ninja! I never would have figured this out by myself. I’ve got a bunch of gift cards I want to get rid of and I’m going to use this tactic right now.
May 5, 2012 — 7:18 pm
Jay Miller says:
Thanks very much for this good advice, worked like a charm. I’m sure that I would not have figured this out on my own.
August 23, 2012 — 11:26 am
Lauren says:
Genius! Just used four gift cards with odd balances (one only had $0.84 left and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away – good thing!) to purchase amazon gift cards by email as you suggested, and I was able to use all four gift card codes towards one amazon order.
Thanks a bunch!!
August 7, 2013 — 3:48 am
Evan Kline says:
I’m glad that it helped, Lauren.
August 7, 2013 — 1:56 pm
hal says:
helped thank you
November 17, 2013 — 11:01 pm
[email protected] says:
hmmm,not worked for me(the order goes thorugh then about 15 minutes later i get an email saying teh card has been declined
December 7, 2013 — 7:02 pm
Cameron says:
I just had this problem as well, but I solved it by registering (another step after activating it) my gift card. I did it online at the website printed on the back of the card. When I registered it, I made sure to use my name, address, etc. because amazon queries these fields when it processes the gift card. After doing this, the card that had been declined worked like a charm!
February 17, 2017 — 5:16 pm
Edwin M says:
If you have several cards, which one is used by Amazon? The first one on the list? How do you change the order??
May 4, 2014 — 9:56 pm
Evan Kline says:
Edwin, I think when you check out, you can specify which card is used.
May 6, 2014 — 3:33 pm
Rosie says:
Does this work with Visa Prepaid Debit Cards? or just for regular gift cards?
June 24, 2014 — 2:05 am
Evan Kline says:
Rosie, I don’t know for sure, but here is Amazon’s page which indicates which cards Amazon accepts in general, so I’d assume this is the list to check (it does mention debit at the top):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201132730
July 7, 2014 — 1:03 pm
Graham says:
Thank you for this – worked like a charm, have converted three pre-paid gift cards to Amazon credits. The one my Mum bought me for my birthday had a high premium (£50 value and £54 to buy!) – and loads of rules that they hope you don’t read – including a £2 per month admin charge after month 9. What a huge rip off.
Anyway all converted to Amazon credit that will get used long before it expires with no charges. Thanks again.
June 26, 2014 — 4:23 am
Evan Kline says:
Glad to hear that it still works, Graham. Thanks for reporting back.
July 7, 2014 — 1:05 pm
Lori Stewart says:
Thank you SO much! worked with my Vanilla Visa gift card.
October 31, 2014 — 11:26 am
Drew says:
I couldn’t get this guide to work so I found this tutorial on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w15S4eYtQ9g
December 7, 2014 — 4:31 pm
AS says:
That’s the exact same method.
December 24, 2016 — 6:13 pm
Anonymous says:
No, it’s YouTube spam. I’d bet that $10 it’s his own channel.
September 24, 2017 — 5:45 am
xuesheng song says:
Awesome! Thank you! It’s the best way to use leftover money in gift card!
August 26, 2015 — 11:48 pm
greglumpkin says:
I had a card with a $1.00 balance on it and couldn’t use it anywhere. This worked like a charm for me. Thanks!
October 7, 2015 — 8:15 pm
sethlife says:
Wonderful – my Amazon and Chase Rewards accounts are connected, I needed to use $200 from the rewards account, so I used them to buy the gift card and then used my Amazon Store Card to finish the transaction!
October 29, 2015 — 12:43 am
Tom says:
The key is to immediately register gift cards so they may be used for online purchases. Then, you can go to your “Manage Payment Options” page on your Amazon account and “Reload” your Amazon Gift Card Balance by using each VISA gift card. I just used 8 different VISA gift cards to reload my Amazon Gift Card balance. That way, I can use my Amazon Gift Card for purchases. Remember, you can only do this with one VISA gift card at a time. And, don’t forget to delete the VISA gift card from your list of payment options afterwards as the VISA gift card will not have anything left on it. Also, don’t make the same mistake I did by putting your VISA gift card into your payment options and then throwing it away before using it reload your Amazon Gift Card balance unless you keep your entire card number (not just the last 4 numbers), expiration date, and 3-letter code on the back in case you didn’t already register the card. Amazon cannot give you the remaining balance on your VISA gift card, the entire number, or any other information for privacy reasons. And, you need to know the entire number and have the correct billing address (which you can only get when you register the card with the issuing agency) so they will match when you make a purchase and Amazon ‘runs’ the card.
November 21, 2015 — 2:46 pm
Melissa says:
THANK YOU!!! You are a lifesaver.
December 10, 2015 — 4:52 pm
Kevin Morrison says:
Awesome! Thank you sir!
January 24, 2016 — 9:56 am
Gia says:
Thank you so much! This worked perfectly
February 12, 2016 — 5:52 pm
Al Stevens says:
Wouldn’t it be simpler and easier to use Amazon Allowance instead? Simpler because no email codes would be involved. You’d simply use your gift cards (or any payment sources that Amazon accepts) to instruct Amazon to send an allowance to your account, by providing the email address that Amazon associates with your account. When an account receives an allowance, Amazon automatically adds the amount to the account’s Amazon Gift Card balance. For info about Amazon Allowance see:
https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sv_gc_8?ie=UTF8&node=11453461011
March 14, 2016 — 8:29 pm
Cindy says:
@Al Stevens- thanks for the info about the allowance program! That will be very helpful as someone with a child approaching her “tween” years. I did note that the Amazon Allowance program was not available until June of 2015 and Evan’s original post here was in 2012- obviously well before this option became available.
Now if only there was a way to transfer multiple Starbucks Gift Cards to Amazon! For some reason I seem to have an abundance.
March 27, 2016 — 11:48 am
Shari Thompson says:
Thanks so much!! This is such a great hack! I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to find something to buy for the exact amount of a giftcard.
April 12, 2016 — 11:13 am
Jax says:
I have an existing Amazon gift card on my account. When I put in my email address as the recipient it popped up a box asking “Buying for yourself, click here to reload you balance” and I charged it to my Visa gift card entered as a debit card.
July 28, 2016 — 8:04 pm
Jackie says:
Holy cow it worked! I had two virtual Visa cards and used them to buy two Amazon gift cards to place my order. Thank you soooo much!!
July 31, 2016 — 8:25 am
roselyn says:
Awesome!! I even called Customer Service who was unable to assist with two cards for one item puchases…Thank you Thank you Thank you!
September 16, 2016 — 11:40 pm
Natasha Phillips says:
Just popping in to say thanks for this tip. I know I’ve searched this before but I never bothered going through with it until today. I had an old gift card with $17 and change and an item I’ve been eyeing on amazon for ages. Bit the bullet and it worked thanks to your simple instructions. Pleasantly surprised that it worked without technical issues! Thanks! :)
December 1, 2016 — 1:40 pm
Jenny says:
Thank you for this post! Saved me today!
December 17, 2016 — 8:11 pm
kevin says:
Perfect, thanks.
December 22, 2016 — 1:27 pm
Forward Time Traveler says:
TIme traveler here from Q4 2016.
This trick is excellent and still works. I was able to transfer the ‘value’ from a MasterCard prepaid Debit card which I received as a rebate from a computer component purchase.
I am surprised, but extremely happy to say that it was an effortless thing. This rebate card had all sorts of red tape and restrictions–including a mere 4-month period in which it could be used (and they allow themselves a one month period to even get the card to you).
December 28, 2016 — 9:05 am
ohliz says:
Great tip! Now you can also just reload your gift card balance so no email, copy/paste code.
December 30, 2016 — 4:56 pm
Zalman Silber says:
just buy an amazon e-gift card for the amount of your 3rd party gift card, and pay for the amazon gift card with your 3rd party gift card. and you’ll be able to pay partially with the amazon gift card and partially with a credit card.
February 7, 2017 — 12:28 pm
Massiel says:
Thanks for the tip! Very clear instructions :)
March 1, 2017 — 2:34 pm
Prabhakar says:
Thank you!
March 7, 2017 — 7:07 pm
Loyda says:
Very useful information! I just did it and everything went perfectly!
April 29, 2017 — 5:57 pm
l3obbY says:
Thanks for the article, easily solved my problem of having 4 saved Visa gift cards
May 3, 2017 — 2:08 pm
Ba Tam says:
Actually now Amazon has created a method for their customer to do just that. just go here to reload your Amazon balance with all of your prepaid cards & then use it to pay for your purchase/s: https://www.amazon.com/asv/reload/order?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=s9_acss_bw_cg_PrPdLP_3a1_w
May 8, 2017 — 6:19 pm
Alison says:
brilliant. you solved my problem of how to spend a $3 gift card!
June 8, 2017 — 2:18 pm
Jack Black says:
I wanted to zero out my gift card and found your way worked like a charm, Thank You :)
June 10, 2017 — 12:20 pm
Julixa says:
Thank you so much for this information. I just paid myself (lol) $50 on one credit and $50 on another credit card as a gift card to my email immediately. Both gift cards were applied to my cart and I was able to pay the balance with my debit/credit card. I sooooooo appreciate this info.
Thanks again!
November 21, 2017 — 4:34 pm
hd4baja says:
Thank you for the tip! Worked perfectly!
December 26, 2017 — 10:44 pm
Calvin Freedom says:
This was realy helpful I searched all over but dint get a satisfutory post like this
February 6, 2018 — 3:38 am
Heather says:
Brilliant! I mean why didn’t I think of it myself but sure glad you did!!!
February 21, 2018 — 12:37 am
Latisha T Crick says:
OMG! Thank you so much! You are a life saver!
Using a gift card with my credit card worked perfectly! I called customer service and they helped speed up the process.
April 10, 2018 — 5:35 pm
jlove3 says:
Thanks on the fyi – good call … worked for me
May 9, 2018 — 2:51 pm
dailytut says:
Just spoke to a Customer Representative at amazon. When i enable gift card option for my payment the EMI option automatically disabled. They assured this will be enabled in near future. It would be great if amazon let us combine payment for higher value purchases. This is crazy it didnt exist till now.
Robin.
November 22, 2018 — 9:39 pm
Aaron says:
Very helpful, thanks!
December 25, 2018 — 1:08 pm
Nathan E says:
Just tried this today with an AMEX gift card and encountered one snag, which may only apply to AMEX cards, I have no idea. It seems that when reloading the Amazon gift card balance using the remaining balance on my AMEX gift card, Amazon first made a test charge of $1. When that worked, it then made a second charge for the full amount that I had requested – the remaining balance on the card. Because of the $1 test charge, my “new” balance was now $1 less than the requested reload amount, so Amazon declined to load the card balance. Chatted with Amazon and AMEX and confirmed this scenario. It may be that the AMEX card is treated like a credit card instead of a gift or debit card and that is why Amazon insisted on a test charge, but in any case my only option would be to reload Amazon with $1 less than the balance and then when Amazon refunds the test charge, I’d be left with $1 on the card.
May 1, 2019 — 5:28 pm
Sabeer Ahamed says:
Instead can’t you purchase Amazon gift card using you Visa Gift card? Is you Visa gift card a debt card? If it is you could just use that debit card to purchase a Amazon gift card. That should be very simple
December 20, 2019 — 9:07 pm