In this report, readers will learn how some Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) data workers, depending on the country where they are located, are paid with gift cards deposited into their Amazon.com balance as their sole method of payment, how the workers are embedded into the platform, and how they have found ways to overcome these barriers. 

I hope this research draws attention to the existence of Amazon gift cards as a payment method, which can’t be used to cover workers’ basic needs. To overcome these challenges, workers must look for ways to transform their earnings into actual money at the expense of losing a significant percentage of their wages, almost creating a secondary job. It is important to raise awareness about this issue, as the principal motive for workers to look for data work is to generate an income, whether it is our main or supplemental source. Even though Amazon does not see us as employees but as independent contractors, it’s our right to be paid fairly and in a useful manner.

As an MTurk worker, all my payments since joining the platform nearly a decade ago have been deposited into my Amazon.com gift card balance. I am grateful for the work, as it has helped me navigate the financial turbulence in Venezuela, the country where I live. But I hoped the gift card situation would have changed for the better after all these years. This made me wonder how many workers face similar situations in their specific context and where they are located.