Marriott has quietly rolled out a feature that gift card hoarders like me have been waiting for: you can now save your Marriott gift cards directly to your Bonvoy account, both in the mobile app and on the website.
This was originally supposed to go live on March 2, but it took a few extra days. It’s now working, and I’ve had a chance to test it out myself.
What Changed
Up until now, managing Marriott gift cards was a bit of a mess. You’d buy them through various channels – targeted 15–20% discount offers, Daily Getaways deals, card-linked spending promotions – and end up with card numbers and PINs scattered across email inboxes, spreadsheets, and sticky notes.
Marriott did have a separate website at gifts.marriott.com where you could register and store your eGift cards, but that site has now been shut down as of late February 2026.
The replacement is built right into the Bonvoy ecosystem, which is a welcome change.
How It Works
In the Marriott Bonvoy app, tap Account at the bottom menu bar. Scroll past your points balance and award certificates, and you’ll see a new gift cards section.
Tap to add a gift card, enter the card number and PIN, and it gets saved to your account along with its current balance.
On the website, the process is similar. Log into your Bonvoy account, go to Profile, and scroll down past your saved credit cards. The gift card section sits just below.
One thing worth noting: you can even add gift cards with a zero balance. I tested this myself – depressingly, I don’t have any gift cards with money left on them – and it worked without issues. It’s very nice to not have to store them on a separate site anymore.
Why This Matters
If you’ve ever tried to redeem a Marriott gift card at the front desk, you know the experience can be hit or miss.
I’ve had stays where the staff had no idea how to process a gift card payment. On more than one occasion, I’ve been told outright that “we don’t accept those” – which isn’t true, but isn’t exactly an argument you want to have at check-in.
The worst version of this is when the front desk agent writes down your card number and PIN on a piece of paper and promises to “figure it out with a supervisor later.” That never felt great from a security standpoint.
Having your gift cards saved directly in your Bonvoy account should help with all of this. When you’re ready to redeem, tap on the card and hit Redeem Gift Card. Marriott will send you a security code via text or email, and then the card number and PIN are displayed for the front desk to process.
It’s worth noting that you still can’t use gift cards to pay for bookings online – redemption is still handled at the property. That said, just having the details easily accessible in one place, rather than digging through old emails, is a meaningful improvement.
I haven’t had the chance to test the in-person redemption flow with the new system yet, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it’ll make the process smoother – or at the very least, eliminate the “let me write your PIN on this napkin” approach.
The Gift Card Strategy Angle
For those who actively use Marriott gift cards as part of a broader strategy, this feature adds a nice layer of convenience.
Marriott periodically targets cardholders with offers to purchase gift cards at a 15–20% discount. Gift cards also pop up as a redemption option through cashback portals, and can sometimes be purchased in ways that trigger card-linked spending offers or airline shopping portal bonuses.
Physical Marriott gift cards are particularly useful because they can be purchased at certain Marriott properties and trigger Amex Offers. Save them to your Bonvoy account for easy access, and keep the physical card at home for future reloads when new offers come along.
For example, there was a recent Marriott Amex Offer that gave you $100 back upon spending $500 at eligible Marriott properties. Buying a physical gift card at the front desk of a qualifying hotel would trigger that offer, and now you can save the card digitally for future redemptions while keeping the physical card handy for the next reload opportunity.
Previously, juggling all those balances and card numbers required a separate tracking system. Now, everything lives in one place.
Conclusion
This is a small but genuinely useful quality-of-life improvement from Marriott. Consolidating gift card storage into the main Bonvoy app and website is long overdue, especially now that the old gifts.marriott.com site has been retired.
If you’ve been sitting on a pile of Marriott gift cards – whether from discount purchases, Amex Offers, or other promotions – now is a good time to add them all to your account.
If Marriott really wanted to take this further, they’d let you consolidate balances from multiple gift cards into a single vault. That might be overly optimistic for Bonvoy, but a traveller can dream.
This story originally appeared on princeoftravel
