How To Transfer Money From Gift Card To Paypal

You can add a gift card to your PayPal account to use as a payment method.
However, the gift card has to be a prepaid gift card from brands like Visa, American Express, MasterCard, or Discover in order to use it on PayPal.
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One of the obvious perks of the holiday season is gift cards galore.

Prepaid gift cards sold by credit card companies are a particularly great gift, because you can put the balance toward just about anything — including your PayPal account.

And adding a gift card balance to your PayPal account might be a good idea if you often use PayPal.

It's also a great way to eliminate the possibility of forfeiting your funds before you've even had a chance to splurge — a lot of us are prone to losing physical copies of things.

Here's how to add a prepaid gift card from Visa, American Express, MasterCard, or Discover to your PayPal account.

How to add a gift card to PayPal

1. Go into your PayPal Wallet on a desktop computer .

You'll need a PayPal Cash or PayPal Cash Plus account to transfer money from a bank to your PayPal account, but anyone can add a prepaid credit card gift as a payment method, whether or not you've elected for one of the Cash services.

2. Click "Link a debit or credit card."

3. Tap "Link a card manually" if given the option to link manually or through a bank.

4. Enter the gift card information.

5. Tap "Link Card."

Once linked, you can select the prepaid card a default payment option if you'd like.

Sometimes, you might run into an error trying to add a gift card to your PayPal account as a payment method because gift cards lack personal identifiers, unlike traditionally-issued credit cards.

If you run into this kind of trouble, register your gift card — there should be instructions on the card that will direct you to a website for registration.

Additionally, there are also ways to exchange non-credit card gift cards for money in your PayPal account, but the cost of the transaction is significant — usually a minimum of 10% of the value of the gift card.

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Emma Witman is an Asheville, NC-based freelance journalist with a keen interest in writing about hardware, PC gaming, politics, and personal finance. She is a former crime reporter for a daily newspaper, and has also written extensively about bartending for Insider. She may or may not judge your drink order when behind the bar. Follow her on Twitter at @emwity.