Nobody pays us to be nice about this.

Gift Check Now covers a corner of consumer finance that gets remarkably little scrutiny. Americans load tens of billions of dollars onto gift cards every year. A meaningful slice of that money is never redeemed, some of it is eaten by fees that were disclosed only in small print, and a growing share is stolen outright by fraud that retailers have been slow to design out.

We started this desk because the existing coverage has a conflict problem. Issuers publish helpful-sounding explainers that never mention their own dormancy fees. Affiliate sites rank for every "best gift card" query and earn a commission on the cards they recommend. Neither arrangement produces writing that tells you when the answer is "do not buy this."

So our funding model is deliberately boring. We take no money from card issuers, retailers, processors, or resale platforms. We run no advertising and no affiliate links. Nothing on this site is a paid placement, and no company has ever been shown a guide before publication.

What we do publish: how the products actually work, which fees are legal and which are avoidable, what federal law does and does not protect, how the common frauds are run, and what recourse you realistically have when something goes wrong. Where a claim rests on a rule or a number, we point at the source so you can check us.

We are not a complaints desk and we have no access to anyone’s account. If your card has a problem, the issuer on the back of it is the only party who can resolve it. What we can do is tell you what to ask for, what you are owed, and how long they have to answer.