Gift Card vendor in China: Who Pays Naira

A Chinese gift card vendor sits at the far end of a three-link chain. You're in the middle, and we're the end that pays. A $100 Steam card pays ₦103,637.80 in Lagos today. So the rate your deal has to clear is published, not negotiated behind a closed door.

That changes the order of the search. Price your exit first, then hunt for stock that fits under it. Run it backwards and you'll spend three weeks sourcing into a number you invented.

Three links, one of them pays

The first link supplies. The second, you, organises stock, carries the currency risk and absorbs whatever comes back dead. The third pays.

GiftCash NG is the third link. We buy cards. We don't sell them, ship them or hold inventory waiting for a customer. Every quote on the rates page is a purchase price in naira or cedis, tied to a face value band, across five currencies: USD, GBP, EUR, CAD and CHF.

Your revenue line is public. You can open it on a phone in Lagos traffic and know what a $100 card is worth before you message anyone in Shenzhen.

Two markets share one name. The Chinese term 礼品卡批发 covers domestic benefits: JD E-cards, Tmall supermarket cards, Tencent Video and iQIYI memberships, Sinopec fuel cards, phone top-ups, McDonald's order codes. Buyers are Chinese employers stocking staff benefits and marketing gifts.

All of it is locked to the mainland. A JD E-card spends only on JD. A video membership activates only on a Chinese mobile number.

The market you want is the other one: US-region Apple, Steam, Amazon, Google Play. Different issuers, currencies and regulators.

No bridge joins them. A licensed Chinese prepaid issuer works under the 2015 rules on single-purpose commercial prepaid cards, sells into the domestic benefits trade and settles in renminbi. It can't hand you a US Apple code, and it won't take naira.

How do you actually find a Chinese vendor?

Three routes, ranked by how hard the door is to open.

Brand B2B desks. Tencent Video, iQIYI and the three state carriers run enterprise sales teams. They want a company, a volume commitment and a corporate account. A platform turning over a few tens of thousands of renminbi a month doesn't get through that door.

Digital benefits supply platforms. They aggregate stock, expose an API and dispatch single units. Lower barrier, but they still want a business licence, a deposit, and they price in real time rather than on a fixed sheet.

Trade show B2B halls and introductions. Slowest, and the only one where you meet a face instead of a form.

All three land you in domestic benefits. None supplies US-region Apple or Steam at wholesale, because there's no licensed export channel for it. That's structural, not a search you haven't tried hard enough.

What to ask before you place an order

• Direct top-up or code? 直充 puts credit onto an account. 卡密 is the card number plus PIN, dealers' shorthand for it. Codes are portable, which is also why they're the product that gets faked.
• Taxed or untaxed? The gap between a quote with 发票 and one without often beats your whole margin.
• Is the price locked, and for how long? A sheet with no validity window is an opening position, not a price. Get the lock in writing.
• Real stock or displayed stock? Platforms showing 99,999 units then sourcing after you pay will hold your order a day. Test replenishment on one hot item.
• Who pays when it fails, and in how many days? Get a named party and a number. "We'll handle it" is not an answer.

A vendor who answers all five is worth a small order. One who answers two and changes the subject has shown you where the risk sits.

What the buyer pays, and your ceiling

Apple and Amazon print a $100 endpoint, so those are quoted values. Steam and Google Play run as bands from $10 and $50, so the $100 figure is the band top divided by its ceiling and multiplied by 100.

Read the table as revenue. A $100 Apple card sold here puts ₦113,020 in your hand in Lagos, or ₵980.34 in Accra, before you pay a single cost.

Assume you want a tenth. Here's the most you can pay a vendor and keep it.

Every figure on the right is the left one at 90%, so you can rebuild the table from the rates page on any given day.

That tenth has to absorb the time between paying your vendor and getting paid here, currency movement across that gap, the card that comes back dead, the customer who disputes three weeks later. One frozen card turns a +10% trade into a 100% loss, so a single failure in ten erases the run.

Why the cheap stock is cheap

Stock priced well under that ceiling exists in every WhatsApp group you'll join. It exists because someone else paid nothing for it.

Cards bought on stolen credit get clawed back once the original cardholder disputes the charge, and the balance vanishes from the card you're holding. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 452,868 complaints in 2025 with $20.8 billion in reported losses. Government-impersonation scams drew 32,424 complaints and $798 million, and gift cards stay one of the rails those operations use.

Your customer finds out at the till. You find out when he comes back for a refund and your vendor has stopped reading messages. That's not a moral lecture. It's the difference between supplying us for six months and supplying us once.

If you already hold the cards, skip the sourcing question. Payout lands on local rails: bank transfer, OPay, PalmPay or Moniepoint in Nigeria; MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash or a bank account in Ghana. Keep the card unused until the money shows. Start on the brand page for whatever you're holding: Steam, Apple, Amazon or Google Play. Holding several at once? The bulk selling guide sets out the order to send them in. Weighing it as a business? The import and export breakdown covers where the margin sits.

Questions sellers ask

Do you buy cards that came from China?

Geography isn't the filter, the card is. We buy what's listed on the rates page and pay in naira or cedis. Where you sourced it doesn't change the quote, though a card that fails verification comes back to you.

Can I buy US-region Apple or Steam cards wholesale from China?

No licensed wholesale export channel exists. What circulates is recovered and stolen stock. A $100 Apple card pays ₦113,020 here and ₵980.34 in Ghana today, so ask what a vendor charging a fraction of that is selling you.

Do I need a company to buy from a Chinese wholesale platform?

Yes. Business licence, corporate account, deposit, usually a minimum monthly volume. Individuals buying single cards are served by the secondary market.

How do I verify a vendor before paying?

Company registration, years trading, authorisation documents, a smallest-unit test order, and a 10% sample redeemed within 24 hours. All five, in that order.

How fast do I get paid when I sell here?

Timing depends on the card and the amount, so the page states the check window before you confirm. Payout goes out once verification clears, on local rails rather than through a foreign intermediary.

vendor exist. The good ones sell domestic benefits to Chinese companies. The ones selling you US cards at a discount are selling someone else's loss, and you answer for it.