When it comes to finding a gift for family members, friends, and colleagues, it can sometimes be quite challenging to find something they would like. During the holidays like Christmas, this is the season when, according to an annual consumer survey conducted by the National Retail Federation (2019) ^[1], consumers are willing to spend a little more on gifts. Additionally, it was recorded for the 13th year in a row that gift cards remain the most-requested holiday gifts on a shopper’s wish list, accounting about 59% amongst those that were surveyed. According to NAPCO Research (2018), it is expected that Americans will spend around $171.5 billion on gift cards in the year 2019.

What is a gift card exactly you might wonder?

There are quite some terms that many confuse the exact definition of a gift card. There may be some overlapping between the difference of a gift card, gift certificate, store value card, and prepaid gift cards. In order to break it down the differences it will be explained further.

1. Gift certificates …

2. Prepaid gift cards …

3. Store value cards …

4. Gift cards …

So, to come back to the question ‘what is gift card exactly?’. Gift card is basically a card with a set amount of money value that is redeemable at a retail company or an affiliated group of retail companies that share the same name, mark, or logo;

However, did you know that there are different types of gift cards?

In the U.S. there are actually 2 (3) types of gift cards that are being sold and used. One is a closed-loop gift card and the other is an open-loop gift card. The difference between these 2 different kinds of gift cards is the redemption availability. When it comes to closed-loop gift cards, it can only be used and redeemed at the single retail brand company that purchased gift card belongs to whereas open-loop gift cards can be redeemed at multiple different stores that accept it.

No matter how popular gift cards are, many that were gifted a gift card never got to use it as they simply just forgot about it and left it somewhere at the bottom of their drawers. These unused gift cards can be called unredeemed gift cards. There are many causes for gift cards to go unredeemed. It can either be they were lost, stolen, expired, forgotten, etc. To know more about consumer rights when it comes to gift cards, click here.

If you indeed ended up finding a gift card that was long forgotten somewhere in your house and it is now expired, it really is a bummer as you didn’t get to use the value worth of that gift card. In the end, it just feels like lost and wasted money. It is very highly unlikely that the retail stores would accept the expired gift card as it has already passed its due time and has no more value. Sometimes if you are lucky enough, when you reach out to the company and explain your situation, you can still get a little something in return although it may not have the same amount of value as what your gift card had. An interesting alternative would be to find someone who is willing to accept them. You can check out Giftomatic.