Walt Disney World to begin accepting Digital Disney Gift Cards

Posted: Monday November 16, 2015 8:00am EST by WDWMAGIC Staff

Launching today, Walt Disney World will begin accepting Digital Disney Gift Cards at many of its retail locations.

Unlike the physical plastic gift cards, the digital version of the gift cards are loaded onto digital wallet apps on the various phone platforms. Examples of digital wallet apps include Passbook, GoWallet and Gyft.

In order to pay using the gift card, the digital wallet app presents a bar code to be scanned at the register, similar to how you can pay with a physical gift card.

Disney's own upcoming digital wallet app aimed at children, YuDo, will also be supported in the near future.

The addition of support for digital gift cards represents Disney's continual advancement in support of new payment options. Disney was one of the first to support Apple Pay, and offers its own electronic payment system with MagicBands.

Discuss on the Forums

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prberkNov 17, 2015

Umm, I have another option to make payments really simple: Give them cash. Your balance is updated as soon as you do the transaction. It is clear how much you have left in your "wallet." And no app required....

mj2vNov 17, 2015

Not to be too much of a geek, but passbook is now just called wallet.

dstrawn9889Nov 16, 2015

because Disney, with their on-sites, pre-authorizes an amount you specify, and then they just do not run the card until the limit is reached(saving them the transaction fees for the multiple runs of the card). it is like the room service charges that any hotel does... they just charge one chunk at the end of stay

freediverdudeNov 16, 2015

I don't understand why they can't let you put a credit card on your magicband account, and then the credit card be charged directly for each purchase at the time you touch the magicband. That would make it the same as presenting a credit card, just touching something else to the reader instead of the card. For offsite guests I don't see the need to create an account, like having Disney accept the charges and try to put them through later, which would cause problems.

Rob562Nov 16, 2015

Hmmm... Back when the Magic Bands were rolling out, this was my thought on how they could offer payment via the Bands to non-resort Guests. Linking a credit card opens them up to potential issues with the credit card companies, but if they had Guests pre-pay a balance on a "virtual" charging account, it'd be easier to control. I do this now with Dunkin Donuts and their phone app. You can either link a physical gift card or purchase a virtual gift card in the app. Both can also have value added to them in the app. Then in the store you can either hand them the physical card to swipe or have them scan a barcode on your phone. Getting this virtual gift card system up and running may be a necessary first step toward linking the virtual card system to your MDE account, whereby a Band linked to your account (and perhaps an accompanying PIN entry) can act the same as handing them the gift card or scanning it on your phone... -Rob