Why we don't charge a platform fee
"Free" is a word people are right to be suspicious of. So here is exactly how SendReward makes money, where the real costs hide, and why the price of a reward is its face value — no asterisk.
The short version
Gift card issuers sell cards to distributors at a small discount to face value — usually around 3%. That discount exists because the brand would rather have your $25 in a card they issued than not have it at all; it is a customer-acquisition cost for them. We buy cards at that discount, sell them to you at face value, and the spread between the two is our revenue. You pay $25 for a $25 card. We keep the few percent the brand already gave up.
That is the whole model. It is the same model the large platforms use. Nobody is being clever; it is just how the gift card industry has always worked.
How gift card platforms actually make money
There are really only three places revenue can come from in this business:
- The brand margin. The ~3% discount described above. This is the primary source for SendReward and for most of the market.
- Funding and payout fees. A percentage charged when you pay by credit card (2.9–3%) or when a recipient takes cash instead of a card (4–6% at some providers). These cover real costs — card-network interchange, or moving money to a bank account.
- Breakage. The value of cards that are bought but never redeemed. Some platforms, notably Giftbit, deliberately recapture a share of this.
What is not on that list is a "platform fee" or "per-reward fee" charged on top of face value. A few years ago that was common. It is now rare, because the brand margin alone is enough to run the business, and because charging a visible fee on top makes you look expensive next to competitors who do not.
Where the costs actually hide
"No platform fee" does not mean "no cost anywhere." It means the cost is not a line item called a fee. Here is where to look when you compare platforms:
| Cost | SendReward | Typical big platform |
|---|---|---|
| Platform / subscription fee | $0 | $0 |
| Per-reward fee | $0 | $0 |
| Bank / ACH funding | Free | Free |
| Credit-card funding | 3% + $0.30 | 2.9–3% |
| Cash / PayPal payout | Not offered | 4–6% (where offered) |
| Breakage recapture | No | Sometimes |
The honest read: if you fund by bank transfer and send gift cards, everyone in the table costs you the same thing — face value. The differences only appear if you fund by card (we are marginally more expensive at 3% + $0.30 versus a flat 2.9–3%) or if you need cash payouts (which we do not offer at all).
Why the card fee exists at all. When you top up by credit card, the card networks take roughly 2.9% plus a small fixed amount. We pass that through at cost rather than absorbing it, because absorbing it would mean the brand margin disappears on card-funded rewards. Fund by bank transfer and there is no fee, because a bank transfer costs us almost nothing.
The $25 Amazon card, line by line
Here is the whole thing with real numbers, because "around 3%" is the kind of phrase that hides a lot:
- You pay $25.00 for a $25 Amazon gift card.
- We buy that card from the issuer's distribution channel at roughly a 3% discount, so it costs us about $24.25.
- Our gross revenue on the transaction is about $0.75.
- If you funded by bank transfer, there is no other charge. If you funded by card, the ~$0.75 goes toward the card-network fee instead, which is why we pass the card fee through separately.
That is a thin margin. It only works at volume, which is precisely why we do not offer discounts, free credit or promo codes — there is no room in a $0.75 spread to hand some of it back and still run the service. It is also why we do not buy ads: at this margin, paid acquisition does not pay for itself until volume is very large.
What we deliberately do not do
A few things that would be easy to do and that we have chosen not to:
- No discounting. Face value is the deal. Offering "10% off" would just signal that the normal price was inflated.
- No free credit gimmicks. We give you a $1,000 test balance so you can try the product, but we do not hand out free live rewards to juice signups.
- No hidden spread. We do not quietly sell you a $25 card for $26 and call the difference "processing." The number you see is the number you pay.
- No lock-in. Cancel any unredeemed reward and the full amount returns to your balance. There is no contract to escape.
The uncomfortable truth about "free"
We would be doing you a disservice if we pretended "no fees" was our unique advantage. It is not. Tremendous, Giftbit and Tango all now advertise free gift cards at face value too, for exactly the reason described above. If you are choosing between platforms on price alone, you will find they are all the same, and you will be stuck.
The real differences are elsewhere: catalog size, global reach, whether cash payouts are offered, whether there are native integrations with your tools, whether you need tax forms, and — the one we care about — how long it takes to actually send your first reward. We built SendReward to win on that last one. No demo, no sales call, a free test balance, and a real reward out the door about a minute after you sign up. If that is what you need, we are the fastest. If you need a 3,000-brand catalog or PayPal payouts, use one of the others, and our comparison page will tell you so plainly.
Frequently asked questions
If it is free, how do you make money?
From the brands, not from you. Gift card issuers sell cards to distributors at a small discount to face value — typically around 3%. We buy at that discount and sell to you at face value, and the spread is our revenue. You pay $25 for a $25 card; we keep the few percent that the brand already gave up.
Do you charge anything at all?
Two things, both optional and both pass-through. Funding your balance by credit card adds 3% + $0.30, which is what the card networks charge us. Funding by bank transfer is free. And we do not offer cash or PayPal payouts, so there is no payout fee to charge.
Is "free" just a trial?
No. There is no platform fee, no per-reward fee and no subscription at any volume. The price of a reward is its face value, whether you send one card or ten thousand.
Why do some platforms charge a fee then?
Some do, for cash payouts or card funding. But for gift cards specifically, most major platforms — Tremendous, Giftbit, Tango — now also advertise "free / face value" for the same reason we do: the brand margin is the business model. So price is no longer the way to choose between them.
So what is actually different about SendReward?
Speed and simplicity, not price. No demo, no sales call, a free test balance, and three ways to send (one, a spreadsheet, or the API). If you need thousands of brands, global currencies, cash payouts or tax forms, a larger platform is the better fit and we say so on our comparison page.
Will you ever add a platform fee?
We cannot promise the future, but the model does not need one. Our revenue comes from the brand margin, which scales with volume rather than with a fee on top of your rewards. Adding a platform fee on top would just make us more expensive than the platforms we compete with.
See the model in action.
Free account, $1,000 test balance, face value, no sales call.