Save 10% on any Apple purchase with gift card offers

Whether you’re buying a new iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch, it’s surprisingly easy to either save 10% or earn thousands of Qantas or Velocity points.

This is made possible thanks to the fact that Coles, Woolworths and Big W run 20x points promotions on Apple gift cards with such regularity that you usually don’t have to wait more than a week or two for another one to begin.

How it works

20x points on Apple gift cards

Whilst promotions on Apple gift cards come in several varieties, the overwhelming majority of them are bonus points offers where you earn either 20x Everyday Rewards or Flybuys points per dollar spent.

Essentially, 10% of what you spend on the Apple gift cards is returned to you in the form of rewards points that you can redeem at Australia’s two major supermarkets and their associated brands.

These deals are incredibly common. With the notable exception of September and October (they stop running offers when the new iPhones are released), there’s usually a promotion on Apple gift cards once every two weeks on average.

At Woolworths and Big W you earn Everyday Rewards points whilst at Coles you receive Flybuys points. In both rewards programmes, 2,000 points equals $10 off your shop or 1,000 frequent flyer points depending on which option you select.

For example, if you bought $1,000 worth of Apple gift cards during a 20x Everyday Rewards points offer at Woolworths, you would earn either $100 worth of Everyday Rewards Dollars to spend at Woolworths, Big W, BWS etc or, alternatively, 10,000 Qantas points.

Similarly, a $1,000 purchase of Apple gift cards in a Coles 20x Flybuys points promotion would earn you $100 of Flybuys points that you can redeem at Coles, Liquorland, Kmart, Bunnings, Officeworks etc or convert to 10,000 Velocity points.

This calculator shows you how many points you’ll earn when participating in one of the 20x Everyday Rewards or Flybuys points offers on Apple gift cards:

If you’re looking at these offers purely as a method of saving money then they’re technically more like 9.09% off since you need to spend $110 for every $10 you save ($100 on the gift card plus $10 at Woolworths, Coles etc). For simplicity’s sake, we’ve rounded this up to 10%.

Converting your Everyday Rewards points to Qantas or your Flybuys points to Velocity could arguably be better than 10% off as frequent flyer points can sometimes be worth a lot more if redeemed on certain reward flights (e.g. business class).

How to buy gift cards during a 20x points offer

Earning 20x points on Apple gift cards is simple. If it’s an offer at Woolworths or Big W, you simply scan your Everyday Rewards card when buying them during the promotion period and you should instantly receive 20x points per dollar spent after you pay.

For Coles offers, scan your Flybuys card when purchasing Apple gift cards and the points should hit your account within 1-3 days (sometimes the bonus points lag behind the standard points by a day or two).

Make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully and always open up your Apple gift cards before you pay for them to check for signs of tampering. More information about this scam can be found here.

Other offers on Apple gift cards

Whilst not as common, other stores do occasionally run promotions on Apple gift cards as well. However, the non-points offers tend to be either less generous or have lower purchase limits.

For example, in the last year we’ve seen:

• $10 promo credit on $100 Apple gift cards on Amazon (6 times)
• 10x Qantas points on Apple gift cards on Qantas Marketplace (4 times)
• 8% off Apple gift cards on Card.Gift (2 times)

By comparison, there have been twenty Apple offers at Coles, Woolworths and Big W over the same period. You can see a history of previous Apple gift card deals here.

Finding Apple gift card offers

All Apple gift card promotions are published right here on GCDB, sometimes even before they’re officially announced. Following us on Facebook and Instagram and enabling post notifications will ensure you’re alerted to all upcoming promotions.

You can also join over 13,000 members in our Gift Card Deals group on Facebook if you want to ask questions or learn from other people’s experiences with these Apple gift card offers.

Using Apple gift cards

Apple gift cards are very easy to use. They work in-store, online and over the phone and you can use them to buy devices, apps, music, subscriptions and more.

Online purchases

If you’re purchasing an Apple device online, you can use up to eight gift cards plus your Apple account balance that you have already loaded with up to $4,999 worth of gift cards. This makes it possible to pay for very large purchases using only gift cards.

To add Apple gift cards to your account balance, open the App Store on your device, select your account icon and then press Redeem Gift Card. Either scan the gift card redemption code with your device’s camera or manually enter it.

You can use Apple gift cards and account balances to pay on Apple’s regular online store as well as Apple Education, Apple On Campus and even to buy Apple Certified Refurbished products.

In-store purchases

For purchases at Apple’s retail stores in Australia, you can pay using up to twenty Apple gift cards plus your Apple account balance loaded with up to $4,999 worth of gift cards.

In the past it was even possible to have Apple store staff consolidate multiple smaller gift cards into one larger one but it’s unclear if this is still a service they can provide.

Ways to save even more

Price matching

Apple will actually price match other Australian retailers (e.g. Amazon, Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi etc) if you call them on 133-622 and you can still pay using gift cards or your Apple account balance.

They will only price match up to a maximum of 10% off so if JB Hi-Fi, for example, are selling a $1,000 item for $850 then Apple will only reduce your price to $900.

Note that Apple’s price matching policy excludes members’ only stores like Costco and sellers of grey import stock such as Kogan.

Black Friday and Back to School promotions

Apple have a long established practice of running two major promotional events each year: Black Friday in November and Back to School in January to March.

The Black Friday event is open to all shoppers whilst the Back to School promotion is for Apple Education customers.

For Black Friday in 2024, Apple offered bonus gift cards on selected device purchases whilst for Back to School in 2025 they gave out credits on AirPods and Apple Pencils.

GST refunds

The Australian Government’s Tourist Refund Scheme (TRS) allows you claim back the 10% GST on purchases you made within 60 days of leaving the country.

To do this, you need to visit the TRS facility at the international airport that you’re departing Australia from and show them your goods, invoice, passport and boarding pass. You must have spent at least $300 with the same supplier (e.g. Apple) to qualify.

Note that if you return to Australia with the same items you are obliged to declare them. Australian adults can bring up to $900 worth of goods into the country duty-free so if you exceed that limit then you may be required to pay GST upon your return.

There are some other rules that you should be aware of before claiming a refund through the TRS so carefully read the information provided on the Australian Border Force website linked above.

Cashback offers

Cashback services like ShopBack and TopCashback usually run a few promotions throughout the year where you can earn 6-8% cashback instead of the usual rate of 1-2% when buying devices on the Apple website.

However, newly released Apple products are usually excluded from earning any cashback for the first few months so you need to double check that the item you’re interested in buying isn’t on the exclusions list.

Also, make sure the terms and conditions for the upsized cashback allow payments with Apple gift cards or account balances as they sometimes don’t.

Qantas Shopping and the Velocity eStore

For points enthusiasts, it’s often possible to double dip and earn an additional 1-2x Qantas or Velocity points per dollar on your Apple purchase by clicking through the Qantas Shopping or Velocity eStore portals before completing your purchase on the Apple website.

Whilst the terms and conditions for both of these shopping portals exclude purchases made with gift cards, they don’t say anything about using Apple account balances (even if they’re loaded exclusively with gift cards) so you may still receive the points.

However, just as with the cashback offers, newly released Apple products are excluded for the first few months so make sure you confirm the one you want to buy is eligible before shopping.

Other gift card offers

Apple gift cards aren’t the only gift cards frequently included in promotions where you can save 10% or earn 20x Everyday Rewards or Flybuys points.

For example, we also see a lot of offers on Ultimate and TCN multi-retailer gift cards, some of which can be used at Apple stockists like JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and Officeworks.

However, the catch with these other gift cards is that the promotions on them usually have much more restrictive limits (e.g. the largest denomination is $50 and you can only buy five at a time). Apple offers, by comparison, tend to have generous purchase limits that allow you to spend thousands of dollars each day.

Whilst straight 10% discounts are rare for Apple gift cards, they’re not so unusual for Ultimate and TCN gift cards so if you would prefer the simplicity of an upfront saving then you might want to wait for one of those offers.

Conclusion

If you’re paying full price for Apple products then you’re almost certainly throwing money away. Buying Apple gift cards during a promotion at Coles, Woolworths or Big W is a very easy way of saving around 10% or earning thousands of frequent flyer points on your purchase.

These promotions are incredibly common so you usually never have to wait more than a week or two for one to start. The only exception to that is September and October when Apple release their new iPhone models and temporarily pause all offers on their gift cards.

Depending on the timing of your purchase, you might also be able to stack your gift card savings with a price match, cashback offer, Apple event or GST refund.

Featured image credit: GCDB, Apple