Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

Zeek is a new marketplace for buying and selling gift vouchers & cards. I gave it a go to see how it performs.

If you’ve ever received a gift voucher, maybe for your birthday or Christmas, for a retailer you simply don’t use, then rather than putting it safely away in a cupboard where you’ll forget it (and inevitably only remember it after its expiry date – research suggests that as many as 30% of vouchers go unspent), then Zeek gives you the chance to convert it into cold, hard cash.

Selling Gift Cards & Vouchers

To sell your voucher (it can be either an electronic voucher, or a physical voucher / card, but not a coupon or discount code), you have to search for the retailer from Zeek’s inventory (the list of retailers is pretty big, so finding them shouldn’t be a problem), you then enter its value and other details, such as the serial number, and the level of discount you’d like to offer. The selling price needs to be at least 10% less than the face value of your voucher.

If you’re using the mobile app to sell your voucher (apps are available for both iOS and Android phones), then you’ll also have to upload a photo of the voucher. Once all these details are entered, the voucher will be approved for sale by Zeek. They claim that currently 94% of vouchers are sold within a day.

If you’ve sold a digital voucher, this can be deleted once you’ve confirmed the sale. For physical vouchers, these will need to be mailed off to Zeek for them to send them on to the buyer.

Your money can be transferred to a PayPal account or sent to your bank via a bank transfer. For digital vouchers, you’ll receive your money within 14 business days of the sale – for physical vouchers, you’ll be paid within 14 business days of the voucher reaching Zeek in the post – so there’s a bit of a wait to get your hands on the money. Zeek put this delay down to the time needed to verify the voucher.

Zeek Fees

For each sale you make you’ll be charged a processing fee of 7% of the card’s value, with a minimum fee of £3. So it’s probably not worth selling very low value vouchers – from £20 upwards seems to be the norm.

Buying Vouchers

On the flip side, if you’re looking to buy vouchers (either as a gift for someone, or to secure yourself a discount on a purchase you’re looking to make at one of the available retailers), then you can also do this through Zeek.

Here’s a small sample of the types of retailer and the discounts on offer, at the time of writing (these will regularly change, depending on the supply of vouchers at the time):

Zeek were kind enough to give me some credit to test out the site, and I plumped for a Sainsbury’s voucher with a 3% discount, which will help me save on my weekly shop. The process is pretty straightforward, although if like me you choose to receive a physical voucher rather than an online one, you’ll have to wait for it to arrive in the post before you can use it. Digital vouchers will be available to use immediately.

Whilst there is a good variety of retailers to choose from, from time to time you’ll find there are no vouchers available for a retailer, depending on the supply/demand for them.

Zeek is available on the web or you can get their iPhone and Android apps for buy and selling gift vouchers on the go.

There’s also a referral scheme which gives you £5 when you refer a friend to Zeek (and they make a purchase) – they’ll also get £5 to spend on Zeek too.

Verdict

From the selling perspective, Zeek offers a good new way to turn gift vouchers in to cash; given the fees, it’s probably not really worth selling vouchers under £20 though, and there is a bit of a wait to get your hands on your money.

If you’re looking to buy vouchers, then Zeek offers some reasonable discounts, and I could even imagine making frequent purchases to sneak an extra 3%-5% off retailers we use regularly.

Although the testing of the site I’ve been able to do so far has been pretty basic, my experience of it has been very straightforward and all worked smoothly, both online and on the app.

* This blog post may contain affiliate links, which means that for some links you click through and make a purchase or register for a service, I may earn some commission.