It happens every year. My grandmama and grandpapa get me a substantial gift card to Cracker Barrel. But after my harrowing experience in that folksy food asylum in 1998, I’m never going back. Thankfully, I can finally spend that money on video games.
GameStop now has a gift-card exchange program in partnership with Cardpool, a company that will give you cash for gift cards. For example, Cardpool will give you a check for $41 if you send them a $50 Bed Bath & Beyond gift card. Now, at gamestop.cardpool.com, you can use that process to exchange your gift cards for a GameStop electronic gift card. The benefit of this is that you will typically get more value for your cards if you trade them for credit at GameStop, but the amount you’ll get back will vary depending on where the card is from.
Cardpool is an exchange market, meaning that it has no set value for any gift cards. Instead, the money the company offers you will fluctuate depending on how in demand that card is. If a lot of people are buying Forever 21 gift cards, you’ll get more money when you exchange that for GameStop credit.
This is another example of how GameStop is getting creative to provide its customers with more ways to spend money. The company is using its ubiquitous stores to move from dominating physical sales to digital, and it has found a lot of success with that — and this gift-card exchange may further propel that growth.
“We’ve always been about providing our customers access to the best in gaming technology and providing value through our trade-in and preowned offerings,” GameStop vice president of preowned merchandising Jon Haes said in a statement. “Through our partnership with Cardpool, GameStop is offering customers a new way to purchase the devices and games they enjoy playing. Offering our customers the unique ability to exchange other retailers’ gift cards into GameStop e-gift cards, we are providing a way to get even more value from being a GameStop customer.”
With this new service, it gives players the capability to buy what they want rather than locking them into a single store or restaurant that they may not care about. It also gets customers shopping on GameStop’s website, and it also brings Cardpool a younger, tech-savvy crowd.
“With the ability for gamers to convert gift cards into merchandise they want at GameStop, everybody wins,” a spokesperson for Cardpool said in a statement provided to GamesBeat. “Consumers get GameStop e-gift cards, GameStop gets additional business with its customers, and retailers benefit by getting their gift cards into the hands of the consumer who will redeem it at the retailer location.”
U.S. consumers put $118 billion into gift cards in 2013, according to a report from retail-tracking firm CEB. That is greater than the GDP of 136 nations around the world. E-gift cards are growing especially fast. Consumers spent $4 billion on sending digital money for merchants to one another last year, which represents an 8-fold increase compared to 2012.
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