I use gift cards regularly to unlock country-specific content stores (such as Steam and others) other than where my bank or physical location is. Not once have I seen a gift card supplier that sells them cheaper than face value.

Where does your experience come from? It seems appallingly out of touch.

At Costco and other stores, you can often purchase gift cards for a bit below face value.

When Apple, Amazon, etc, seek to have retailers carry their gift cards, the retailer needs to have an incentive. So the gift cards are usually sold for below face value to the retailer. In turn, some retailers will sell gift cards for below their face value.

So, e.g., at this moment, Nintendo eShop $50 cards are $44.99; XBox/Sony Playstation $100 gift cards are $89.99; a $500 gift card on Alaska Airlines is $449.99; $100 at Hulu is $89.99.

These are not particularly good prices. Oftentimes Apple $100 gift cards will be $79.99.

The other incentives at Costco still hold, too; you can get the Executive Membership 2% back and the 2% credit card cash back.

If I wanted to use a US content store and in fact lived in the US (which sounds like a prerequisite for being able to enjoy those Costco discounts), presumably I would not need to purchase gift cards in the first place.

Where gift cards are available, they are never cheaper than face value due to basic market dynamics.

In retail stores in non-Western countries I have never seen a gift card with e.g. 100 unit value sold for less than 100 units either, although I haven’t specifically looked for such.

I didn't say you could go to Costco. Just that the market often values gift cards at less than par, because they are generally less useful than normal money.

In degenerate cases, I can see that the reverse could be true.

I peeked. (A) Cards I use are not there, (B) an Apple Store US$100 card is sold for $100, and (C) US payment method is required, which kind of defeats the entire point. Good try though.

In this thread, a fundamental misunderstanding of how gift card market works seems to prevail.

There’s basic arbitrage. Vendor Acme in region X locks out people from region Y (e.g., based on payment method address); Alice lives in region X and can buy an N value Acme gift card for N-1 at a local store; Bob lives in region Y and wants to transact with Acme; Alice buys a gift card for N-1 and sells it to Bob for N+1 online; Bob gains the ability to transact with Acme, Alice gains 2 as revenue.

Thus, gift cards going for higher than face value does not automatically imply anything beyond a market acting as it should and is not specific to Amazon in any way.

> and (C) US payment method is required, which kind of defeats the entire point. Good try though.

You... are aware that the primary market for USD-denominated gift cards is US residents, right?

You still don’t get it. The original poster uses gift cards going for higher than face value on eBay as evidence of money laundering. I am pointing out that on eBay there is a demand for gift cards from buyers whose payment method is accepted by eBay but not accepted by gift card vendor. Those buyers may be located elsewhere in the world but want to use that vendor’s content or services, so they buy gift cards and use them as primary way of payment. eBay sellers respond to that demand by setting higher prices for gift cards.

I live in Asia and I can buy amazon gift cards without a problem using a non US credit card. they warn you that they are denominated in USD and hence might not be able to use one's preferred method of payment, but that's about it.

The original poster is simply wrong. First, most of the gift cards are selling close to or below face value. Second, people have other reasons besides "money laundering" for doing so. It can be eBay cashback promos, Paypal cashback promos, etc.

The original poster provided an eBay link, and my personal experience confirms that gift cards for US-only services relevant to non-US residents are sold for above face value on online marketplaces accessible to non-US residents. I only disagree about the reason, I don’t necessarily see anything nefarious about selling them at higher prices than face value.