The Nation’s First Law Protecting Against Gift Card Draining Has Passed. Will It Work?
The Nation’s First Law Protecting Against Gift Card Draining Has Passed. Will It Work?
Despite industry pushback, Maryland became the first state to require secure packaging for most gift cards sold at stores. “It will change packaging nationally,” one retail insider predicted.
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An estimated $570 billion is loaded onto gift and prepaid cards each year in the United States
Holy crap, I had no idea that so many people buy these stupid things. My mother used to buy them. She'd give Visa $5 in order to give me a $100 gift card. I told her she was wasting her money and she should just write me a check but she just kept doing it.
Based on the fee schedule at this site, that 5% fee is normal. That means these companies are making $28.5 billion per year providing no useful service at all.
they're huge in the homeless community. it's the only way a person with no bank can pay for most things these days.
the homeless community is rapidly growing too.
Starbucks had 1.2 billion USD held on Starbucks cards/the app back in 2016, “enough to be a midsize bank,” and I can only imagine it’s gone up since.
$1.2 billion would be a very small bank. But also, that money is not able to be used by Starbucks. It's not "earned" yet. I don't know the details on what they can invest it in, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has to just sit in a bank account earning very little.
Even a small bank would be able to invest the money much better.
If I can make an assumption; it’s your fault. I’m just trying to gift you something you’ll appreciate. Can’t you help with sone sort of wish list or favorite store? I know gift cards are a ripoff but no one uses checks anymore and without any constraints I have no reasonable way to gift you something you’d appreciate
The government should consider printing some sort of paper voucher as a representation of money to be used in instances such as this. /s
I do remember such a thing from decades ago, but haven’t seen anything like that in years. Do people still use it? Do i need to goto some sort of museum? Can I use it online or from my phone?
It doesn’t matter—you can use it with your drug dealer, which is what you probably wanted anyway.