Gift card balance is not your rewards balance

Row five is the one with practical consequences. Rewards can leave Amazon; gift card balance cannot. If you have both and you need money rather than an Amazon order, only one of these two numbers can help you.

Chase describes the Prime Visa welcome offer as a $150 Amazon Gift Card loaded into your Amazon Gift Card balance on approval (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). The Amazon Visa’s is a $50 Amazon Gift Card loaded into your Amazon Gift Card balance on approval (Chase — Amazon Visa, verified 2026-08-11).

Read the wording: loaded into your Amazon Gift Card balance. Not credited as points, not applied to your statement. It arrives as Amazon credit, in the Amazon pot, with Amazon’s rules attached.

That produces a predictable confusion in the first month of holding the card. New cardholders check their Chase rewards balance expecting to see the welcome offer, find nothing, and conclude the offer has not been honored. It has — it is just in the other place.

It also has a practical implication worth naming: a welcome offer you cannot take as cash is worth less than a welcome offer you can, if you would rather have money than Amazon credit. That belongs in the honest valuation of the offer, which we do on the welcome offer page.

Both balances can be applied to an Amazon order, and they appear as separate options in the payment section rather than as one pooled figure.

The order in which you spend them is worth a thought, and the logic is simple: spend the less flexible money first. Gift card balance can only ever be used at Amazon. Rewards points can be taken as eligible purchases at Amazon.com checkout, cash back, travel and gift cards (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11) — cash back among them. Spending the flexible pot on an Amazon order when the inflexible pot was sitting right there is a small unforced error.

There is a second reason to leave points alone at checkout, unrelated to flexibility. If you return the item, a purchase paid partly with points refunds in a way that involves two currencies moving in two directions, which is where the confused-balance reports come from. That is covered on returns, refunds and your points.

Neither of these is about value. Because 100 points = $1 (each $1 in % back rewards earned is equal to 100 points) (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11), redeeming at checkout is worth exactly what redeeming any other way is worth. It is purely about keeping the flexible option open, which is the same conclusion our redemption guide reaches.

One detail in the Chase terms that surprises people. The eligible-purchase definition covers eligible purchases at Amazon.com including digital downloads and Amazon.com Gift Cards (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12) — Amazon.com Gift Cards are named explicitly.

So buying a gift card at Amazon with the card is itself an eligible Amazon purchase for earning purposes. We are noting this because it is in the published terms and because people ask, not as a suggestion. Buying gift cards to generate rewards is the kind of manufactured-spending behavior that issuers watch for and terms change around, and it is not something this site is going to recommend.

The ordinary case is the useful one: if you were buying a gift card as a present anyway, it earns like anything else at Amazon.

Gift card balance is Amazon’s money, in dollars, stuck at Amazon. Welcome offers land here. Refunds can land here.

Rewards balance is your issuer’s money, in points, worth 100 points = $1 (each $1 in % back rewards earned is equal to 100 points), and it can leave Amazon as cash back.

If a balance seems to have vanished, check which of the two you were looking at before concluding anything — that mix-up is one of the six ordinary causes on the missing points page. And if you cannot find your rewards balance at all, the usual reason is an unlinked card, covered on where to find your points.