Coinstar Expands Services with Amazon to Include Amazon Cash
Reading Time: 3 minutes Coinstar, the operator of about 5,000 kiosks in many high traffic retail and supermarket locations which offers consumers the ability to turn coins into “Cash” announced they are now expanding their partnership with Amazon.
“We’re excited to team up with Amazon and give shoppers an easy and convenient way to add cash to their Amazon Balance. Coinstar is proud to enable Amazon Cash at Coinstar kiosks for cash-preferring customers, who can now enjoy the same benefits of shopping online as any other customer. Best of all, there are no fees to use the service.”
Jim Gaherity, CEO of Coinstar, LLC
For many years, customers could use Coinstar kiosks to turn their coins into Amazon Gift card codes that could then be used on the eCommerce retailer’s shopping platform.
When converting coins to a gift card, Coinstar does not charge a fee. Therefore, the customer receives a gift card based on the exact coins they brought to the Coinstar kiosk.
Otherwise, conversions to cash would incur a small fee that is deducted from the proceeds of the coins to cash exchange.
Coinstar offers gift cards for available for Amazon, AMC Theaters, Applebee’s, Bass Pro Shops, Best Buy, Chili’s, Chuck E. Cheese’s, GameStop, Old Navy, IHOP, Lowe’s, Nike, Panera, Red Robin, Regal Theaters, Sears, Sephora, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Home Depot, eBay, and Itunes. Merchant availability may vary by location.
The company also offers the choice to donate coins to a charity, which include American Red Cross, Children’s Miracle Network, Feeding America, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Humane Society, UNICEF, United Way, and World Wildlife Fund.
Coinstar has a video that explains the basic operations of their kiosks.
Expanded Partnership Now Includes Amazon Cash
Now customers that want to convert their coins into “Cash” have a new option that allows them to instantly reload their Amazon Cash account on Amazon.
Amazon Cash is really a Amazon gift card purchase and instant reload in the Amazon customer’s account and basically functions similar to a digital wallet.
The initial roll-out of this service will start in the northeast U.S., but is expected to complete by the end of the year to include all kiosks around the country.
To find an Amazon Cash enabled kiosk, the company launched coinstar.com/amazoncash.
Amazon customers wishing to spend their cash on Amazon via Coinstar only need to associate their phone number to their Amazon account, which they can do at www.amazon.com/cash.
To begin a transaction at Coinstar cash-accepting kiosks, the customer selects “Cash Services,” and then “Amazon Cash.”
Next, the customer enters their phone number and inserts bills into the cash acceptor on the kiosk totaling any amount between $5 and $500.
An Amazon Gift Card is automatically purchased and claimed to the customer’s Amazon Balance and is available for immediate use for eligible items on Amazon.com or select affiliated properties. There is no fee to use this service at Coinstar kiosks.
READ MORE: Amazon to Accept Cash for Online Purchases
This new addition of the thousands of Coinstar kiosks further expands the Amazon Cash network of load-up locations that allow for more un- and under-banked consumers to purchase products from Amazon.
Naturally, this is great news for Amazon third-party sellers as the eCommerce marketplace expands availability to more shoppers that rely on cash or have no bank account.
It locks those consumers to the Amazon platform as their money now sits in Amazon’s digital wallet ready for use on their next purchase.
Coinstar also operated in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and Germany. In some of those countries Amazon offers Amazon Cash, but the kiosk operator currently does not offer gift cards or Amazon Cash reload services in those countries.
Do you think providing more options to allow consumers with no bank accounts to use Amazon will help your business? Head over to our Facebook Discussion Group or use the comments section below.
If you liked this article and would like to engage with other small business entrepreneurs selling on marketplaces, join our . You can also find us on , , , and or sign up for our newsletter below.
SIGN UP. BE INSPIRED. GROW YOUR BUSINESS.
We do not sell your information. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Richard Meldner
Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.
To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.
No more Starbucks cards through Coinstar… only Amazon gift cards can be “selected.”
Frustrating!!
What Coinstar didn’t tell anyone is that Amazon is apparently their new and EXCLUSIVE client for redemption. They eliminated all other options.
Will NEVER use them again.
Found this out on Monday. They’ve been putting out a “canned” response on their social media since mid-June along the lines of “Apologies, we’ll update as soon as we can”. Now, if they were up-front and stated “We now work exclusively with Amazon”, you might not like it, but at least it would be an honest answer. Instead, they’re dancing around this. I enquired via their Twitter as to whether they had an update on this: I await a response.