Bitcoin Forum

I've been thinking of making quite a few purchases from Amazon lately, and I remember people are selling Amazon gift cards as if they're in abundance. You can even find them as options when buying and selling bitcoin from non-KYC exchanges, and can be bought much cheaply than they're worth.

- Are these legal? I remember there was an Amazon saying that you can't sell gift cards. Do people get caught into doing that? The transaction can be made anonymously, and I wonder how Amazon can figure that out.
- Are they legit or is this a usual financial instrument used to scam people?

Depends on the terms of service whether they are legal. But they have no way to detect that gift cards are being sold unless someone tries to cash out a large batch of them in their order (which is not wise to do anyway). I've been buying iTunes cards regularly for some time and I've never had any problem redeeming them.


Well if they just show you a code, it could already have been redeemed so buying them by P2P is very risky.

Yeah, as it turns out, they are not very friendly with unauthorized sellers.  :P

Was it Coinsbee or Bitrefill? These are probably authorized.

When selling in DEX, the buyer sends you the gift card first, so you get to verify it redeems.

Yes I don't see the reason why the purchase of Amazon gift cards would be illegal

The purchase of Amazone gift card is legal and people had been making profits from that for long now. You just have to make sure that the you don't buy coded Amazon gifted card. I think there arf two types of Amazon gifted card, we the code Amazon gift card which is mainly generated at the point of purchase from there online store. You can't sell it because it can be traced to the actual owner while the scratch card Amazon gift card can be bought originally at any physical store that sell gift cards. They can be sold whether online or physical to any person without any risk. 

Yes, but amazon encourage its users to only buy from authorized dealers because obviously you will end up getting scammed. Although there are "some" unauthorized sellers who sells cheaper that's why they get the most sales instead of those authorized one.

I have been using Bitrefill for buying local grocery store gift cards for more than a year now, I have seen they offer Amazon gift cards too but I have never tried them.

The gift cards are issued by from their terms and conditions section. Do give than a read in case you are willing to buy on their site and try it out.

Not sure about the legal issues though, but only good reviews on the site so far.

---

Fees are huge though. ;)

Coinsbee. Though I'd assume the Bitrefill cards work too.

personally I use bitrefill and cryptorefill to purchase gift cards from Amazon and other companies, especially for supermarkets and gas stations. As far as Amazon is concerned, I've never had any problems, the important thing is not to use the gift cards with an Amazon account to which a credit card is not linked, otherwise the account will be banned and the gift card will be lost.

On some Peer to Peer marketplaces, reselling giftcards on a same platform is considered as a violation of their Terms of Service. Because it can be abused by scammers, using one giftcard for different trades and scam different trade partners.

If you only want to purchase gift cards for your personal use, it's fine but you have to know risk of reselling giftcards like I said. At least the risk is big if you resell a same gift card on a same platform where you bought it.

When trading gift card with a trade partner, you must have a screen recorder that can be used as a proof of trade when you need to make a dispute.

Redeem gift card quickly because if you are late, the trade partner can scam you.

How to Safely Trade Gift Cards on Paxful (https://paxful.com/university/safely-trade-gift-cards/)

It is legal if you buy it from a legal provider. Some hackers can sell stolen, hacked or illegally obtained cards, so it is better to buy it from Bitrefill or ask the buyer to have physical cards and take a photo of them, as it is difficult to forge these cards.
Physical Gift Cards are legal but don't expect to get them at a good discount.

But on other hard, how do we know whether a seller is authorized third party? I did quick search, but it seems Amazon doesn't show such list.


It depends. With rate lower than one (e.g. you pay $95 to get $100 gift card), it could be either scam, obtained illegally or the seller simply want to get rid of their legit gift card.