Transferring balances left over prepaid credit cards

Question

How can one transfer small balances, leftovers, on prepaid credit cards?

I actually have 6 or 7 prepaid Visa or Mastercard cards left with balances between $1 and $4. I would like to get rid of them. I do not want to throw them away.

Is there a way to transfer these small amounts to another card, PayPal, or a bank account?

The financial institutions that emit those cards probably expect us consumers to just throw them away when the amount of money left is small. That gives them still more money. I think this situation is unfair for all consumers and would like to find a way to get back my money.

My solution, so far, has been to make small donations to charities and Wikipedia like websites. What is your solution?

Answer 1

You can simply use them to pay in a supermarket or anywhere else. Just give them the card and say ‘put 1.23$ on this one please, and the rest I pay cash‘ or whatever. They might be annoyed when you have really many, but you can use up one every time you shop easily.

For some cards, you do not even have to know the remaining amount, just say use it up.
Note that supermarkets are preferable because they are typically used to that, and know how to handle it.

Answer 2

I had a good half dozen of these with various amounts, none of them quite enough to make a purchase anywhere and, like you, I didn't want them to go to waste.

If there is at least $1 on the card, you can use it to buy Amazon eGift cards, which is what I did. It's not as nice having actual cash, but for me it was the next best thing.

You can also use them to sign up for free trials for subscriptions. If you forget to cancel, then you're saving your normal credit card from being charged.

Answer 3

Spend them at the gas pump. Just run the pump until it stops, then repeat with next card. That's always worked for me

Answer 4

A few years ago, I had the rare opportunity to take advantage of a credit card offer. Specifically, a 10% cash back deal on purchases at drug stores or supermarkets. The offer was limited to 90 days, so during that time, I bought 100 cash gift cards at my local CVS.

Over the next year to use them all, when they dropped to a balance under $5 or so, I signed in to my cable TV account and charged the remaining balance there. No bothering a supermarket clerk, or store owner.

Answer 5

You can split payments, and nobody judges you because most prepaid cards are actually gift cards. They just think you have generous friends.

When you use Visa/MC at a vendor, they get dinged around 2-3% plus 35 cents flat-rate. So when you ask them to charge 77 cents to the card, you're essentially asking they give half of it to Visa/MC. Which is unfair. A charity won't turn it down, but it's wasted. So how do you solve this problem?

Use the card at places where that's not a problem

If you see a small merchant using Square or PayPal Here, their merchant agreements charge a flat rate (2.75% and 2.70% respectively) with no flat rate per transaction. If you see they are on PayPal/Square, go for it.

Obviously PayPal itself doesn't have that problem, because they have a really, really good deal with Visa and Mastercard. So feel free to buy yourself credit on your PayPal account with these residual values. Amazon probably has a similar deal.

Change spending strategy

You are getting these small amounts because you aim to pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $25 on it. Reasonable, but it causes this.

Flip it around: pay a $22.69 bill with a card that has $20 on it, consume the $20 value, and pay the $2.69 in cash.

You may need to tell the cashier exactly the amount to charge (e.g. $20.00) especially if it is a Visa/MC card. It will certainly go faster if you do. The cashier may be able to pull up the balance, but it's an extra procedure, and an inexperienced cashier may struggle with it / have to call the manager etc. - not worth it in my book.

Answer 6

Amazon luckily allows you to buy gift cards for virtually any amount, down to even a dollar. Whenever i have some random amount left on a gift card, i just go ahead and buy an Amazon e-gift card with it. FYI - this works only with e-gift cards, not physical ones