Chances are, over the years you’ve received a few Starbucks gift cards as gifts. My guess is that you’ve also managed to give out a few as well. After all, if you have no idea what to get someone as a gift, a Starbucks gift card is a great fallback option.
While I love getting Starbucks gift cards, I always end up with the same issue. That is, I upload the card to my Starbucks account and use it to pay for a drink. Then, I’ll end up with a balance that doesn’t quite cover my next order. Ultimately, I end up with a card sitting in my account with a few bucks on it that I plan to use “eventually.” However, as the months go by I forget about it and never end up using it.
This exact situation happened earlier this week when I got a notification email from Starbucks which reminded me of an aging unused balance. In this case, I have $5.14 left on a Starbucks gift card that I hadn’t used since December.
The email from Starbucks of course served as a reminder to use my card by buying something, but as I investigated a bit, I learned that I could actually transfer that balance over to my primary Starbucks card.
Transfer A Starbucks Gift Card Balance To Your Starbucks Card
Personally, I’m not all that familiar with the Starbucks app. When I order Starbucks from the mobile app, I’m usually walking to work and trying to avoid behind hit by a car! So, until recently, I really had no idea how Starbucks payment methods worked. In fact, for a while I was mistakenly adding a balance to a Starbucks gift card instead of to my actual Starbucks card. I say this because perhaps you’re reading this and thinking to yourself “duh, everyone knows about this.” If that’s the case, feel free to stop reading now… If you aren’t aware that you can transfer your gift card balances to your Starbucks card, here’s how to do it.
Start by launching the Starbucks app and clicking on the “Scan” button along the bottom. Once in the “scan” page, you should see all of your saved cards. When you find the card you want to transfer a balance off of, click on the “Manage” button.
On the “manage” page you’ll see a few different options. Specifically, you’ll find a “transfer balance” option. When you click on that, you’ll see the below prompt appear on the card management page.
As you can see, all you need to do is select which balance you want to transfer and to where. Once that’s sorted, simply click on the big green transfer button and you’re done!
You should quickly see your gift card balance change to $0, when you can then remove the card from your account.
Next, you can swipe over to your primary card to see your updated card balance. Overall, if you know what you’re doing, the whole process takes less than a minute.
Final Thoughts
I wish I knew about this balance transfer option sooner. For years I’ve had these random Starbucks gift cards sitting in my account that I never think to use. When I try to use the card I’m told that I have an insufficient balance and I need to reload my card (again, I’m sure that I’m missing something here). So, the only way I’ve ever been able to use these cards is to remember to ask the person at the register to scan two cards. That usually means I have to order in store, which I never do anyway.
Long story short, if you get a Starbucks gift card you can add it to your account, transfer the balance to your primary card account, and delete the gift card. Hopefully now you can go into your Starbucks account and delete all those random gift cards from your payments page. Unless of course you like having all of the seasonal gift card images in your mobile wallet. In that case, keep ’em in there!
