Why Every Scam Eventually Asks for a Gift Card
Fraudsters did not choose gift cards by accident. They are the closest thing to untraceable, irreversible, remotely collectable cash available to the general public.
Independent prepaid research
Read the fine print before you pay for it.
Gift cards are a $200-billion habit built on terms most buyers never read. We take those terms apart — the fees, the expiry rules, the fraud, and the money that quietly never gets spent.
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What do you need to know?
How It Works
Where your money goes, what activation really does, and why card type decides your fees.
ReadFees & Fine Print
Every charge an issuer can apply, what federal law limits, and the clauses that cost you.
ReadDigital & Wallets
E-codes, mobile wallets, and resale markets — what changes without the plastic.
ReadBuying Decisions
Picking a card that gets spent: the recipient, the amount, and corporate programmes.
ReadFraud & Risk
How the scams run, how cards are drained before purchase, and what you can recover.
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The guides people arrive for
Where Your Money Actually Sits After You Buy a Gift Card
You hand over fifty dollars and receive a piece of plastic. The plastic is not the money, and understanding where the money went explains almost every frustration that follows.
Every Fee an Issuer Can Legally Charge You
There are more of them than most buyers expect, they are all disclosed somewhere, and almost none of them are unavoidable if you know which card you are picking up.
Card Draining: How a Card Is Emptied Before You Even Buy It
The most effective attack on gift cards happens in the shop, on the display rack, days before you pick one up. Nothing you do after purchase prevents it.
Closed-Loop vs Open-Loop: The Distinction That Decides Your Fees
One kind of card works in a single chain and usually costs nothing extra. The other works almost everywhere and charges you for the privilege. Almost every fee question traces back to which one you are holding.
Discounted Gift Cards: Where the Real Ones Are and How the Fakes Work
A legitimate secondary market genuinely exists and can save you real money. It sits immediately alongside one of the most efficient consumer frauds on the internet.
Why Gift Check Now
How we work
Nobody pays us to be nice about this.
Most prepaid coverage is written by the people selling the cards, or by affiliate sites earning a cut of every click. Neither has a reason to tell you which fees are avoidable, how much value goes unredeemed each year, or why a discounted card on a resale site can be worthless by the time you use it. We have no such conflict, so we say it plainly.
No money from the industry
No affiliate links, no sponsored guides, no advertising from issuers or retailers.
Claims we can source
Where we cite a rule or a number, we point you to the statute or the issuer’s own terms.
Corrections in public
When we get something wrong we fix it on the page and say what changed.
Recently published
All guidesChoosing a Card the Recipient Will Actually Spend
The measure of a good gift card is not how generous it looks. It is what fraction of the value gets redeemed, and most of that is decided before you reach the register.
How Much to Put On It: The Amount Is a Design Decision
Round numbers feel appropriate and produce awkward remainders. Choosing an amount that maps to something real is the difference between a card that gets finished and one that does not.
Corporate Gift Card Programmes: What the Vendor Deck Leaves Out
Bulk prepaid is sold on convenience and engagement metrics. The costs that decide whether it was worth doing are mostly absent from the pitch.
Do Gift Card Incentives Actually Work? What the Evidence Suggests
Prepaid rewards are popular with programme managers because they are easy to administer. Whether they change behaviour depends on design choices most programmes get wrong.
How It Works
Start here if you want to understand what you are actually buying when you buy a card.
Read guidesFees & Fine Print
The charges, the statutory limits, and the clauses that cost people money.
Read guidesFraud & Risk
How the frauds work, how cards get drained on the rack, and what you can recover.
Read guides