Amazon gift cards: check, redeem, and use every last cent

Amazon gift cards are the ones most of us get, and the ones most likely to sit half-spent because the balance is quietly folded into an account. This guide covers the plain Amazon.com Gift Card in the United States. If your card is for another retailer and simply bought through Amazon, that is a “specialty gift card” with its own rules; skip to the section at the end.

Check your balance

If you have already redeemed the card, the balance lives in your account rather than on the card. Go to Your Account → Gift cards on Amazon.com; the page shows your current balance and a transaction history with order numbers, so you can see exactly where money went.

If you have not redeemed it yet, there is no public balance-checker to type a code into. Redeeming is the check. Some physical cards sold by Amazon have no value printed on them; in that case the buyer can match the 16-digit serial number in Your Orders against the back of the card to see what was loaded.

Note that promotional credits Amazon adds to your account are not part of the gift card balance figure, even though they can look similar at checkout.

Redeem your card

Physical card: peel the sticker or scratch the silver panel on the back to reveal the claim code, a 14- or 15-character mix of letters and numbers. Go to Amazon’s Redeem a Gift Card page, enter the code, and choose Apply to Your Balance. You can also type the claim code during checkout under Use a gift card, voucher, or promo code.

Email, text, or link delivery: there is no claim code. Open the message while signed in to the account you want the money in, then choose Apply to your Amazon Account.

In a physical store: Amazon.com gift cards are for amazon.com and its affiliated properties. They are not accepted as payment at other shops, and anyone asking for one as payment for something outside Amazon is running a scam.

Use a small remaining balance

This is the easy part. A redeemed balance is applied automatically to your next eligible order, and if the order costs more than the balance, the remainder is charged to another payment method. That is a split payment without having to ask for one.

If you would rather keep the balance for a particular occasion, Amazon has a setting to hold your gift card balance instead of applying it automatically. Just remember to turn it back on, or that leftover becomes the balance you forgot about.

Understand restrictions

• Country: an Amazon.com gift card is for the US store. It cannot be redeemed on or transferred to Amazon’s sites in other countries.
• Eligible items: gift cards cannot buy other gift cards, and certain items such as collectible coins are excluded. Any ineligible item in an order needs another payment method.
• Personal use only: Amazon prohibits using gift cards to source inventory for resale, selling the card for cash, or redeeming a card you obtained by deceiving the buyer.
• No expiry, no fees: the balance keeps its value indefinitely.

Troubleshoot

• “Already redeemed”: check Your Account → Gift cards first. The funds may already be sitting in your balance from an earlier attempt. If they are not there, someone else with access to the code may have used it.
• Damaged or unreadable code: contact Amazon with the 16- or 30-digit serial number from the back of the card and, if the card was bought on Amazon, the order number.
• Wrong account: balances cannot be moved between accounts, so the practical fix is to spend it from the account it landed in.
• Specialty gift cards (another retailer’s card bought on Amazon): redeem them with that retailer, not on Amazon, and use Amazon’s specialty gift card help if the code is damaged.

Protect your card

Treat the claim code like cash. Once it is redeemed by someone else, Amazon cannot claw it back. Never read a code out to a caller, and never buy an Amazon gift card to pay a bill, a fee, or someone you met online; Amazon says plainly that a non-Amazon party asking for gift cards as payment is likely a scam. Buy cards only from Amazon or authorised retailers, since cards from unknown sellers may be already drained.

When you file the card in your cabinet, record the redeemed balance and the date, and leave the claim code out of your notes. Once applied, the code is spent; the balance is what matters.

Checked against Amazon’s gift card help pages and terms on Nov 1, 2026. If something here disagrees with what Amazon shows you today, Amazon wins.