International Apple gift cards are a common request for anyone running global incentive and rewards programs. If your team wants to send bulk digital gift cards to employees or customers around the world, Apple gift cards might seem like a great fit—at first glance. Apple is a brand that's beloved around the world, right?
Heads up: it's not quite that simple.
Yes, Apple is one of the most popular international companies going. But that doesn't mean you can send a stack of Apple gift cards around the world and expect them to actually work.
In this article, we’ll explain the right way to use Apple gift cards for global incentive programs. If you want to ensure your digital rewards from Apple actually work, keep reading.
TL;DR - Sending international Apple gift cards at a glance:
🌍 Apple gift cards are region-locked—recipients can only use them in the country you're sending from
🎁 Consider working with a global gift card distributor if you want to send Apple gift cards (and other region-locked brands like Amazon) to international audiences.
Using the right gift card can make or break your reward strategy, especially when your recipients aren’t all in the same country. Get the details wrong, and you risk leaving your recipients frustrated or empty-handed (and wasting your incentive budget, too).
Yes, Apple gift cards are incredibly popular, making them a great choice for all sorts of reward programs.
But let's cut right to the chase: Apple Gift Cards are also region-locked.
That means an Apple gift card bought in one country or region cannot be redeemed or used in any other country or region—not even for digital apps or subscriptions.
This isn’t just a small technical detail. If you buy an Apple gift card in the U.S. and send it to someone with an Apple ID set to Canada, say, they simply cannot use it. The rules are strict, and there simply isn’t any way around them.
Consider this detailed thread on a popular Apple forum. One user from Aruba is struggling to use an Apple gift card. The top-voted reply explains the issue clearly: There is no 'international' gift card. In If you can't redeem your Apple Gift Card or App Store & iTunes Gift Card - Apple Support Apple advises, "You can't redeem Apple Gift Cards or App Store & iTunes Gift Cards outside of the country or region of purchase. For example, if you bought an App Store & iTunes Gift Card in France, you can't redeem it in the App Store in the United States."
So for international rewards programs, this region-lock reality can be a big stumbling block (unless you find the right tools to help you).
Sending the wrong card means people get rewards they can’t redeem. That’s not just disappointing—it’s a frustrating experience for your recipients and a waste of your incentive program’s resources.
💬 Like Nat Salvione, Chief Commercial Officer at Giftbit, says, "You spend weeks designing and launching your program. If the reward experience fails at the final moment, if a card isn’t available or something goes wrong, you’ve just delivered a disappointing experience and negated the whole point of your program."
🧭 Table: “Can I use this Apple gift card?”
| Scenario | Will It Work? | Why or Why Not? |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. card sent to U.S.-based user | ✅ Yes | Apple ID and card region match |
| U.S. card sent to Canadian user | ❌ No | Card is region-locked to U.S. |
| French card sent to French Apple ID | ✅ Yes | Both tied to same region |
| Canadian Apple ID trying to redeem German card | ❌ No | Different countries = incompatible |
💡 Quick rule: Card must match the Apple ID’s country.
We all know how popular Apple. With such an outsized marketshare, Apple gift cards are great choice if you want to please lots of recipients, especially those that are particularly tech-savvy (or simply Ted Lasso fans 😉). And it's not like you're limiting recipients to buying iPhone apps (although they can do that too!).
🍎 Specifically, an Apple gift card gives your recipients access to all things Apple, including apps, games, music, movies, TV shows, iCloud+. They can use it:
At any Apple store
On apple.com
In the Apple store app
In the App Store
For iTunes
For Apple Music
For Apple TV+
For Apple News+
For Apple Books
For Apple Arcade
For iCloud+
For Fitness+
For Apple One
And for other Apple properties.*
*Again, these Apple properties will need to be accessed in the same region that sent the card. Learn about using gift cards for digital subscriptions here.
So that's the bad news. You can't just go to your local drugstore, buy a stack of Apple gifts cards, and them send 'em out around the world—not if you expect them to work.
But that's not really how you want to be managing any amount of reward sending, anyway (more on that below).
The good news is that it's still absolutely possible (and even easy!) to send Apple gift cards to international audiences, assuming you follow some best practices.
Since they're region-locked, the only reliable way to send Apple Gift Cards internationally is to match the card’s region with the recipient's Apple ID region.
That might be a bit easier to do with digital Apple cards you personally purchase (versus that stack of physical cards you bought at Walmart).
But it's still a lot of work on your end, if you go it alone.
And if you plan to send any amount of bulk, it's going to complicated and unwieldy fast, especially if you've got recipients in multiple foreign countries.
👉 So the far better option is to find a gift card platform with a global rewards catalog that includes Apple. Let your gift card provider wrangle with different Apple IDs for different recipients, so you won't have to. 🙌
Specifically, a good, global gift card distributor will handle all the complex technical details for you, helping match the right card to the right country. They'll manage all the region and currency complexity behind the scenes, so you can focus on keeping your recipients happy and your program running smoothly.
For example, at the time of writing this article, the Giftbit catalog offers Apple gift cards in the local currency for:
🇦🇺 Australia
🇦🇹 Austria
🇧🇪 Belgium
🇨🇦 Canada
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇫🇷 France
🇩🇪 Germany
🇬🇧 Great Britain
🇮🇪 Ireland
🇮🇹 Italy
🇳🇱 Netherlands
🇳🇴 Norway
🇪🇸 Spain
🇨🇭 Switzerland
🇺🇸 United States
Translation: if you have recipients in any of these countries, just upload your recipient list, pick the denomination of Apple gift card you want to send, and click 'send' ... and that's it! That's all the work you'll have to do to ensure your recipients in all these regions can easily get their Apple rewards (and finally catch up on