Kobo store balance

[Aleron Ives]

I have an Amazon gift card that I'd like to spend on books, but it appears that Amazon doesn't sell Kobo gift cards in the US. The only way to transfer the balance that I can see is to buy a prepaid Visa card (and accept the associated fee) and use that to buy a Kobo gift card directly from Kobo. Does Kobo accept such prepaid cards, and if not, are there any other options?

*edit*

Well, apparently Amazon forbids you from buying Visa gift cards with your Amazon gift card balance, so that the money stays locked in the Amazon world. I guess it's impossible to buy Kobo books with Amazon funds, unless you live in Canada...

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I have an Amazon gift card that I'd like to spend on books, but it appears that Amazon doesn't sell Kobo gift cards in the US. The only way to transfer the balance that I can see is to buy a prepaid Visa card (and accept the associated fee) and use that to buy a Kobo gift card directly from Kobo. Does Kobo accept such prepaid cards, and if not, are there any other options?

*edit*

Well, apparently Amazon forbids you from buying Visa gift cards with your Amazon gift card balance, so that the money stays locked in the Amazon world. I guess it's impossible to buy Kobo books with Amazon funds, unless you live in Canada...

Amazon gift cards can be used for anything on their platform. Why don’t you try asking a friend or family member to help you out? You buy something for them using the gift card balance, and they give you the same value as money so that you can buy a Kobo gift card off Walmart, for example.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Amazon gift cards can be used for anything on their platform.

But if bought on Amazon website, you must buy them on the marketplace the recipient is wanting to use. You can buy them on any Amazon Marketplace, no matter what your home marketplace is.
Example 1:
You live in UK, you can only buy Kindle ebooks in UK.
Your friend is in Germany but wants to buy something from Amazon.com (USA) that is not an ebook. They can only buy Kindle ebooks from Amazon.de.

You must buy the gift voucher on the USA site and email to email address the recipient in Germany uses for Amazon.de.

Example 2:
You live in USA.
Your friend is in Ireland and wants to buy an ebook. By default they can only buy ebooks from UK marketplace (amazon.co.uk), but they can set all their Kindles on the account to use USA (not just one kindle). It simply uses USA pricing, the titles available are as per UK.
You buy the gift voucher on the marketplace that the Irish customer currently has their Kindle(s) linked to. Though currently it seems possible to to swap at any time.

The restrictions on where a gift voucher can be used (only market place where bought, not matter where each person has "home" account, non-transferability and inabiliity to spend it on gift vouchers or credit balance is allegedly to do with preventing money laundering.

Also while most Amazon marketplaces let you log-in with your "home" market place credentials, at least the Japan marketplace used to need a separate account (which I managed to do though I can't read Japanese).