Gift Card Import Export Business: What Cards Pay in Naira and Cedis Today

Gift card import and export is a price gap, not a shipping business. Apple pays ₦1,128.06 per $1 on today's board; Xbox pays ₦458.15. Same $200 face value, and the two cards are ₦133,981.60 apart. Every figure below was captured on 15 October 2026.

What import and export means when the goods are codes

Almost every card in this trade is a digital code. There's no plastic to clear at Apapa or Tema, and no customs officer waiting for a bill of lading.

That changes what the business is. The import side is a payment problem: you need a way to send money abroad. The export side is a payout problem: you need a way to collect naira or cedis at this end.

It also kills the most common piece of advice on this topic. The line you'll find most often is to "obtain the import and export permits you need." There's no duty on a code, so a customs broker can't help you. What costs you money is the route your dollars take and the fees sitting on it.

Three routes do most of the work in West Africa: an international debit or credit card, a PayPal or Wise business account, and a SWIFT bank transfer. On the way back in, Nigerian sellers collect by bank transfer, and Ghanaian sellers collect by MTN MoMo or Telecel Cash. Pick the route before you pick the supplier, because the fees decide whether the trade works at all.

What each card pays today

GiftCash NG publishes its payout bands on the live rate table, and they move. The Nigerian board also prints a reference line of 1 USD = ₦1,332.

Ghana runs on the same brands at its own cedis rates. The cedis view publishes no dollar reference line, so don't read that column against the naira one.

The $200 column takes its rate from the band that actually contains $200, so an Amazon $200 is priced off the $100 to $500 band and not the smaller one. Each payout comes from the top of its band divided by the top face value, so it can sit a few kobo away from the printed rate times 200.

The rows above are a slice of the board, not the whole thing. If you're holding a different face value, the Apple page and the Steam page both print their full bands.

Where the margin actually comes from

Your margin isn't a percentage a blog can hand you. It's the gap between what you pay for a code and what the platform pays out. Work backwards from today's board and the gap stops being vague.

Fund the purchase at the same ₦1,332 the board uses as its reference, and the break-even discount is easy to read off:

• Apple / iTunes: 84.7% of face value
• Steam: 62.0% of face value
• Amazon: 49.0% of face value
• Xbox: 34.4% of face value

Read that list twice, because it inverts the usual advice about cheap cards. An Xbox code at ₦458.15 per dollar only works if you buy it for about a third of what it's worth. Nobody sells at that price, so a full-price Xbox card you bring in is a loss booked in advance.

The cards that survive the arithmetic are the ones the board pays most for. Apple leads at ₦1,128.06 per dollar, then Razer and the fashion retail cards at ₦1,052.14, with Steam next in the gaming group at ₦825.73. Those are the brands to hunt for when you're sourcing.

So the real work sits in sourcing, not shipping. What you want are codes you didn't pay face value for: leftover balances, giveaway wins, cards a relative abroad never needed. That's the import in the name. Value coming in from outside, not a container on a ship.

The paperwork that actually applies

There's no customs filing, but there is a business to register and tax to file.

In Nigeria that means a registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission if you're trading as a business, a business bank account, and VAT and company income tax filings. In Ghana the equivalent registration runs through the Registrar General's Department, with tax handled by the Ghana Revenue Authority. Speak to an accountant about your own filing position. Our guide to gift card exchange taxes shows how the tax side lands on a payout.

Keep a record of every leg: what you paid, the date, the supplier, the card type, and the payout. That habit pays for itself twice, at filing time and if a batch of codes turns out bad and you need to know which supplier sent it.

One more thing before you scale. What's being bought and sold is the code, and the buyer carries the risk that it's already been used. That's why platforms verify balances, and why a seller who can't prove a balance gets turned away.

The risks that end these businesses early

Supplier fraud is the one that kills most attempts. A batch of codes arrives already redeemed, the seller goes quiet, and the money is gone. Test with five to ten codes before any bulk order, and never use an irreversible payment route with a supplier you haven't bought from before.

Verification is the second. If a balance can't be confirmed, no platform will pay for the card. Scratched, partly used, and screenshot-only codes all get rejected, so check what you're buying.

Rate drift is the third, and most guides describe it backwards. Over the 21 days we logged Steam's dollar band, the naira rate moved inside ₦822.89 to ₦828.13, a spread under one percent. The cedis side wandered about 3.4%. Holding stock to catch a better rate earns you very little and costs you the risk of the codes going stale. The timing guide runs this over a longer window and lands on the same answer: which card you pick moves the number far more than which day you sell.

A lighter way in, without importing

If the payment side is what's blocking you, skip it for now. You can trade cards that are already in the country. Unused gifts and promotion codes sit with people who'd rather have cash, and those are the ones you buy below face.

From there the flow is simple. Check the band that covers your face value, sell at the published rate, and let the platform carry verification and payment. Same business, hardest half removed. It's how sellers in Lagos and Accra usually start.

The trading apps breakdown shows where buyers actually sit, and the guide to running this as a side business maps the smaller version of the same model. If you'd rather work the price gaps without holding stock at all, the arbitrage strategy covers that route.

Start on the rate table. Find the band that contains your face value, note the payout per dollar, then open the card you actually hold. That could be Amazon, Target, Razer, Xbox, Roblox, Sephora, Google Play or PlayStation. Price your first order off that number, not off a headline.