That's not really savings, though, because they need to sell it to Office Max for a price where A) Office Max can pay credit card fees, and B) make a small profit.
Well that was kind of exactly my point. It is in their interest to do gift cards because they don't lose anything or incur a cost on themselves, once someone is locked into a gift card they only gain sales.
This is made possible at least in part because they have savings on the credit card cut
They have to sell it to retailers for less than they'd get after credit card acceptance. E.g. Apple sells gift cards for $88/$100 to a retailer, who then uses the remaining $12 on transaction costs (including paying their credit card fees) and profit margin.
Vs. Apple likely loses ~2% on credit card acceptance-- and gets to keep $98/$100.
It's still worth it, because they capture money from last-minute gifts, etc...
Though $88/100 is super unrealistic with margins on electronics of 1-2% Amazon would be taking a loss of what the profit from 10 laptop sales every time they dealt with someone buying a laptop all in gift cards.
Or maybe gift cards are so rarely used in this way they write it off with higher margin uses
This is made possible at least in part because they have savings on the credit card cut