CardSwap.ca Review & Giveaway CLOSED

Have you ever gotten a gift card for you birthday or Christmas that you decided you didn’t want, or that you’d just be “wasting” the dollars on? Well, I have…tons of times! Seeing as how 1 in 2 Canadians will receive a gift card this holiday season. And another shocking statistic? 1 in 5 of those gift cards will go unredeemed! What a waste! Little did I know there was a service called CardSwap.ca that can be absolutely perfect in those situations.

Did you know that you can sell your gift cards on CardSwap for up to 92% of the face value in cash? Pretty amazing! You can buy gift cards too, or donate them to charity. CardSwap is Canada’s #1 site to buy and sell gift cards.

A bit more about the company: 

CardSwap allows you to get money that you can use any way you want for your unused gift cards. Don’t let those unwanted gift cards waste away in your wallet or get lost in your sock drawer. Turn your Winners gift card, Cineplex gift card, Lululemon gift card, and many more into cash today.

If you needed even more of a reason to get rid of your unused gift cards, you can sell your gift card to CardSwap and we will turn it into a donation to a selected charitable organization. When you make a donation of gift cards that would normally be unused, you are able to make a positive contribution to these organizations. The charity will provide a tax receipt for all gift cards that are donated.

CardSwap is a safe and secure website, but my husband was a little leery of trying out this service. Just mailing off a valuable gift card into the abyss? Would we really get cash or swap points? I really wanted to try this service, as we have 5 unused gift cards for Best Buy we got last year when we wanted to buy an iPad. We did buy our iPad…just not from Best Buy! This is a perfect example of how useful this site can be. We don’t need anything from Best Buy right now, so why not exchange our cards for cash or swap points for other gift cards to stores we’ll shop at?

Here’s how it worked selling a Best Buy gift card:

Step 1: I selected Best Buy and entered $25 (the minimum amount of card value you can sell on CardSwap) to see what my offer was. I could get 2200 SwapPoints (value of $22) or $21.25 Cash. I opted to try for SwapPoints.

 I entered the gift card code and was ready to sell it to Card Swap.

I entered my info to get ready to mail my card.

Step 2: Mailing my card. You must print the reference sheet and the free shipping label and it’s as easy as that.

Step 3: Getting paid. I mailed my card off on December 28th and received an email notification on January 9th that they had been deposited in my account. So with the holidays it took approximately 7 business days from beginning to end.

I guess perhaps one of the downsides of this service is you might not always get the gift card you want when you want it. For instance, I added Old Navy to my Wish List and got an email when a gift card became available to purchase within about 15 minutes. I did go to see if they showed availability of cards for purchase, and they do! Here’s what I saw when I went to look at Sears cards:

As you can see, at the time there was a $50 and $100 card available and you get bonus SwapPoints for purchasing them.SwapPoints are a part of a reward system created by CardSwap to allow you to earn, collect, then redeem SwapPoints for gift cards to your favourite merchants or cash back via PayPal.Once you’ve earned a minimum of 1,000 points simply click on the “Redeem” tab and choose your reward. It also shows that 3 cards were purchased recently for Sears. I did click on a few of my favorite merchants and they all had cards available, so i guess it just depends on the day and time! There’s probably lots available now after Christmas, so have fun shopping!

If you have any further questions about this service they have an amazing FAQ page to look at.

I know the question you’re really curious about: is this legitimate? The answer, honestly, is yes. I am a repeat CardSwap customer and their service is fast and quite amazing. I have sold gift cards I’ve literally had lying around for years to stores I never shop at. I have bought gift cards for our grocery store – something we use every week. It truly is a wonderful service.

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Disclosure: I was compensated for this review but opinions are all my own. I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned in this blog post.