Gift card won't activate

Sometimes, gift cards purchased at retail stores need to be activated at the checkout. If the card wasn't properly activated, it won't work. Double-check with Walmart to ensure the card was activated when you

purchased it.

Hi MAD MAN JAK3,

Thank you for posting on the Xbox forums.

Unfortunately, we cannot activate a gift card for you on the Xbox forums as already stated in your

original thread. Gift cards are activated by the retailer you purchased the card from when the card is scanned in their system. If you purchased a digital gift code from the Microsoft Store, that code would be activated automatically.

Sometimes you may just need to wait a few hours, but essentially you will need to go back to the store you purchased the card from and have them activate the card for you.

We will be locking this thread since the only answer has been given and it is a duplicate. Going forward please refrain from making duplicate posts on the same topic. This violates the

Xbox Forum Guidelines and further threads on the same topic will be deleted. Thank you.

I bought an $30 pack of $10 Xbox gift cards from target. I tried redeeming them, but they won't work, even though I activated them. Nothing like this has ever happened before. When I try to redeem one of the cards, it says "Code not yet active. Please contact merchant to activate it," EVEN though I activated it.

You cannot personally activate the gift cards. only the store you bought it from can.

So if its giving you errors about the cards not being activated then that means the store you bought them from didnt activate them properly.

Youd have to go back to where you purchased them (as the error suggests) to tell them to activate them.

It kind of depends on the system the retailer uses. I work in retail and I know there are some places that have a two step process when it comes to gift cards like that. If you don't complete the processes it won't activate the card. Or it's just a glitch
in the system.

Hello HinataDragon,

Thanks for keeping us updated. If the Xbox Gift Card is not activated, you will need to take it back to the retailer in order to get it activated. An Xbox Gift Card is activated when it is scanned out of the retailer's system. Some retailers require
the card to be scanned in a specific manner, and that might be what's affecting the Xbox Gift Card. We have a support article that explains more about

this specific scenario. We hops this information helps HinataDragon!