this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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Never liked gift cards. Money you can only use in one place, and you don't even save any money when buying it.
I'm with you but I also can see them useful to a degree. Children often want to get games from steam/nintendo store/EGS vbucks/etc and parents really do not want to enter their credit/debit card data everywhere under the anxiety of child abusing that card. Gift cards solve this problem.
Couldn't they just implement a credit system? Parent does a one time purchase for Steam bucks and then they use that until they run out.
They do have such a system. If you click your username on the top of your desktop client (I'm on the Linux client but believe the windows one also works like this), there should be an item "View my wallet", this will take you to a page where you can add money to it.
Or if it only shows up for me because I have a balance (sold some steam cards), go to Steam -> Settings and there should be an "Add funds" button right below your profile pic in the Account tab.
They only seem to support specific values (mine does 5, 10, 25, 50, 100). Oh and there's a link to redeem gift card codes; you might already use this page to get there if you use gift cards.
You can walk down to a local Walmart and slap a $20 on the counter, walking away with funds even if you have no car and no credit card.
Hard for a teenager to get steam games without this.
I was not aware that could be a problem (had a debit card £ as a teen when online buying/downloading games started).
even if you have a debit card, in much of the world unless it’s a visa/mastercard it’s not going to be accepted in many places online
my debit card (in canada) uses interac. it’s accepted basically everywhere in physical stores, but online it’s pretty much useless if you don’t also have paypal (which is also not accepted everywhere a credit card would be)
That sucks. Hopefully something can change that :/
I'm hoping GNU Taler takes off.
I'll concede your point, though there are generic pre-paid cards that are not linked to a specific store.
Those have fees, though. Back when I didn't have a bank account, it was already over $5 per card, so I assume it's much higher 15 years later.
We see today how bad it is to rely so much on visa and paypal for steam payments when they can control what they want and what they don't want to see being sold on steam. I think gift cards could be an interesting alternative but idk.
IMO we need regulation. Banks and payment processors should not be allowed to refuse service to any legal activity.
That concerns are also really inconsistent. They don't seem to have a problem with cigarettes and alcohol, and are quite prepared to authorise payments to strip clubs.
But they have a problem with porn games. How does that track?
I always get them at Sam’s Club, they’re around 5% off the face value there. Can’t remember the exact price but was somewhere around $18.92 for a $20 card. Not a huge discount but will definitely miss it.
A coffee shop used to offer a $10 gift card for every $40 gift card you bought (or something like that) around Christmas. It was meant to get people to buy them as gifts but we knew we were going to go there throughout the year anyway so we loaded up for ourselves.
Same but with haircuts. My mom used to get 4 for $40 cards around the holidays. She was very astute when it came to finding actually good deals.
I'm not the biggest fan of them either, but there are lots of ways to get them for an amount greater than you paid.
Also there is something to think about with gift cards I asked a friend why they always got me them as gifts and found what they said interesting. For them they wanted to get me a game, a Lego Set, or something similar. The gift cards let my friend give a gift while I get to choose which specific thing I get.
The only time gift cards really make sense is when you can buy them for less than face value.