Does Walmart Have Coinstar? Machines and Fees
Walmart does have Coinstar machines at most Supercenters, usually near the front entrance or the MoneyCenter. But not every store has one, and there’s a fee to know about before you dump your change in.
Coinstar Location in Walmart
At most Walmart Supercenters, the Coinstar kiosk sits up front, usually near the entrance, the customer service desk, or the MoneyCenter. It’s the big green machine you’ve probably walked past a hundred times.
If you can’t spot it, the MoneyCenter staff can point you to it, and that counter keeps its own hours if you’re timing a visit around other cash service.
Not every Walmart has one, though. Coinstar placement depends on the store, and smaller formats like Walmart Neighborhood Markets often skip the kiosk entirely. Older or smaller Supercenters can be hit or miss too. So, before you haul a heavy jar of change across town, it’s worth confirming your specific store has a machine.
★ The fastest way is Walmart’s store finder, which lists a location’s services, or a quick call to the store. The Coinstar website has its own kiosk locator too, if you’d rather search by machine than by store.
Coinstar Fees at Walmart
The fee is the same at Walmart as it is anywhere else, because Coinstar sets it, not Walmart. If you choose cash, you pay a service fee that runs about 11.9% to 12.9% of your coin total, plus a flat $0.99 transaction fee.
Coinstar’s own help center lists the cash fee as up to 15.9% depending on location, so the exact rate you see can vary from one kiosk to the next.
Feed in $100 of coins and choose cash, and you’ll walk away with roughly $86 after the percentage and the transaction fee.
| Option | Fee |
|---|---|
| Cash | About 11.9% to 12.9% plus $0.99 |
| eGift card | No fee |
| Charity donation | No fee to you |
| Crypto or CINQ card | Around 12.9% plus a reload fee |
Quick Note
The flat 99-cent fee stings more on small amounts, since it’s a bigger slice of a $10 cash-out than a $100 one. On $10 in coins, that fixed fee alone is nearly 10% before the percentage even applies, so for small change, cash is the worst way to use the machine.
The machine prints a paper voucher, and you take it to a cashier or the customer service desk to get your bills. Redeem it the same day it prints, since the voucher isn’t good indefinitely.
If you’d rather handle other money errands while you’re there, Walmart’s MoneyCenter covers things like money orders and if Walmart takes checks, so you can knock those out on the same trip.
Skip the Coinstar Fee
The trick almost nobody uses is, choose an eGift card instead of cash, and Coinstar charges no fee at all. Your $100 in coins becomes a $100 gift card with nothing skimmed off the top. That’s the single best way to get full value out of the machine.
At the kiosk you pick a participating retailer or restaurant from the on-screen list, and the machine prints a voucher with a gift card code on it.
Common partners include Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, Home Depot, Best Buy, AMC Theaters, and Southwest Airlines, though the exact lineup rotates and varies by kiosk.
The voucher works like a plastic gift card, so you can use the code online or in-store, and you check the leftover balance the same way you’d check a Walmart gift card balance.
My honest take is that the gift card route only makes sense if one of the partners is somewhere you already shop. If it is, it’s free money you were leaving on the table. If it isn’t, a gift card you’ll never use is worse than the cash fee.
Donating Coin through the Kiosk
Donating your coins to a charity through the kiosk is also fee-free to you, if you’d rather give the change away than spend it. You pick a charity on screen and get a receipt, and the donation may be tax-deductible.
One important thing to know is that Coinstar keeps a processing cut from the charity’s side, so the organization receives a little less than your full total, even though you pay nothing.
Crypto and Prepaid Card Options
Coinstar kiosks do more than coins-for-cash these days, and a couple of the newer options show up at Walmart machines.
You can convert coins to cryptocurrency like Bitcoin at many kiosks, and Coinstar also rolls your change onto a CINQ virtual prepaid Mastercard you can spend online right away.
Both of these still cost you. The crypto and CINQ card routes carry a fee in the same ballpark as the cash option, often around 12.9%, plus a small reload fee on the card.
They’re only worth it if you specifically need crypto or want to spend the money digitally that minute. If your goal is just to keep the most value, the fee-free eGift card still beats them. I’d treat crypto and CINQ as niche conveniences, not money-savers.
Coin Limits and Machine Rejection
There’s no hard cap on how much you can cash in, but Coinstar suggests contacting its help center if you’re bringing in more than about $3,000 in coins at once. Crypto transactions are capped lower, around $2,500 per transaction. For a normal coin jar, none of those matters.
The machine only takes standard U.S. coins. It won’t accept foreign currency, and it kicks back oddities like old steel pennies, silver dollars, pure-silver coins, and commemorative or collector coins.
Those land in the reject tray, so check it before you leave, because a genuinely rare coin is worth far more to a collector than its face value anyway.
★ It also helps to make sure your coins are clean and dry, since dirt and debris can jam the tray and slow the count.
When Coinstar Is Worth It
Coinstar at Walmart earns its keep when you value convenience over squeezing out every cent, or when you’ll take a fee-free gift card to a store you already use. Pour the jar in, get a voucher, done. For that, it’s genuinely handy and it’s right there while you shop.
It’s a poor deal when you want cash and there’s a free option nearby. A bank or credit union will usually count coins for free if you’re an account holder and rolling coins yourself with free wrappers costs nothing but time.
Trick to Save
Use the coins at a Walmart self-checkout to pay for groceries directly, since the machines take coins and give change back in bills. That turns your loose change into spendable money with zero fee and no separate trip.
Match the option to what you actually need, and Coinstar stops being a machine that quietly eats your money.
