eBay made an unexpected announcement yesterday, advising that it’s going to cease the selling of its own gift cards both online and in-store.
Per the announcement on eBay’s website:
Starting August 3, 2026, the sales of eBay gift cards on all digital platforms will no longer be sold.
- Physical eBay gift cards may remain available at select retailers while supplies last.
- Only eBay-issued gift cards are being discontinued. Third-party gift card listings on eBay will continue to be available.
- There is no change to how you use an eBay gift card you already have. Existing eBay gift cards remain valid and can continue to be used on eBay according to our gift card terms and conditions.
It’s very rare that retailers stop selling their own gift cards entirely, if for no other reason than it benefits them financially to have a lot of people’s funds locked up on their gift cards.
eBay’s reason for this policy change is curious too. In the limited set of FAQs it states:
Why is eBay going to stop selling gift cards?
We’ve decided to stop selling eBay gift cards and focus on other ways to support customers
eBay isn’t exactly known for providing world class support to its customers, so I’m sure there’s probably some kind of more specific reason(s) they’re ending the sale of their own gift cards that they’re simply not disclosing.
One possible reason—and this is just my pure speculation—is that eBay gift cards can be prone to fraud, especially resold gift cards. Their gift cards have a 13 digit code but, unlike the vast majority of third party gift card brands, you can’t balance check the cards. The only way to see the balance is to add it to your account, but that then locks the card to your account.
What’s been happening at times is that people are buying eBay gift cards on resale sites, applying them to their account, then claiming that there’s no balance on them. The resale site then debits the person who sold them the gift card and, although they can dispute it with the resale site, there’s not much they can do to prove who redeemed it or how.
It might therefore be that eBay has seen an increase in fraudulent gift card usage in recent months or years and that this has led to an uptick in complaints, which in turn would increase the cost of servicing their gift cards. I doubt that would be their sole reason for choosing to no longer sell eBay gift cards, but perhaps it’s played a part in their overall decision-making.
Anyway, as a result of this upcoming policy change, if you were interested in redeeming Capital One Shopping portal earnings for eBay gift cards, it would be better to do that sooner rather than later in case eBay gift card redemptions get pulled from there sooner than August 3.
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Potential Fraud, Ebay & Gift Cards. Im shocked.
Thanks just picked up $800 worth!
Seems like a better solution would be for them to handle gift cards differently. Of course Amazon does it the same way with few problems.
I still miss the old days when eBay gift cards purchased on eBay used to get you 5X on Chase Ink Cash and Ink Plus cards using PayPal. I think they somehow coded as a utilities purchase.