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I have a $150 USD American Express prepaid gift card. Which is the most cost effective way to extract the money to put in to my US bank account or Paypal account? First option is to create two paypal accounts and transfer it back and fourth although this will cost $10.

Buying something or paying bills with it is not an option.

Thank you.

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    Technically this is not allowed. I think the best option would be to sell it for cash to someone who could use it as intended (buying/paying with it) - for cash. Probably you'll have to give some discount, so the $10 the Paypal trick will cost you may be your best option. – littleadv Feb 1 '15 at 6:27
  • If you Google "sell gift card" you will find a bunch of sites. I'm not sure if there is a dominant market however. – rhaskett Feb 2 '15 at 17:58
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    Why is just using it to pay for stuff not an option? I can understand selling at a discount if it was a particular store restricted gift card but an Amex gift card isn't that type of card. – Raze Mar 5 '15 at 16:50
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    giftcarddrainer.com – Jesse Mar 30 '15 at 18:05
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    @Raze This is usually because the person is trying to game some point earning system by spending as much as possible as quickly as possible. This is usually by purchasing gift cards, getting the money back out of them and purchasing more gift cards. – Eric May 30 '15 at 2:10
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Buy something from Nordstrom, then return it and ask for cash. They may ask for your ID. Nordstrom's return policies are very lax and they will almost always give cash when asked for, sometimes even if you don't have the receipt.

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  • OP said buying something is not an option. I think buying something at Nordstroms is stilling buying something. – JoeTaxpayer♦ May 30 '15 at 2:03
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    The context he gave, buying something or paying bills, implied buying something as a permanent solution is not an option. I think OP would consider buying something with the intention to return the item and convert to cash. – Jesse May 30 '15 at 14:36
  • Fair enough. You are right in that regard. Still, to his issue, I spend this much on a credit card in an average single day. So the constraint of not using it to purchase makes little sense to me. Even a single person will spend $150 on food over a few weeks. +1, by the way. – JoeTaxpayer♦ May 30 '15 at 15:07
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Depending on the particulars, you could get an Amex Serve account, load it into your Serve account, have them send a check for $150 to a family member of yours, and then have your family member transfer $150 to you seperately.

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Another approach, albeit slow: Buy something that's free after rebate.

Upsides: Low cost. (Stamps, envelopes)

Downside: Slow, hard to get an exact match on the amount of the card.

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