Resources
Gift card guides
Practical reference material for the operational, financial, and compliance side of running a gift card program.
Gift card expiry laws by country
Compliance summary covering the U.S. CARD Act and state additions, Canada, Australia (ACCC), New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Read guide
SecurityHow to prevent gift card fraud
The five attack patterns to plan for — card draining, code harvesting, social engineering, chargeback fraud, internal fraud — and the platform controls that defeat them.
Read guide
FinanceGift card accounting and liability
Deferred revenue, breakage under ASC 606 and IFRS 15, multi-channel liability tracking, and the monthly reports your finance team should be running.
Read guide
StrategyGift cards vs store credit vs experience vouchers
Side-by-side comparison of the three instruments — when to use each, how the choice affects accounting and customer experience, and how to combine them.
Read guide
Which guide do you need?
These four cover the parts of a gift card program that are not about selling — the obligations you take on the moment you accept money for something you have not yet delivered. Most operators arrive at them in a predictable order.
If you are launching a program, start with gift cards vs store credit vs experience vouchers — the instrument you choose determines nearly everything downstream, including how the revenue is recognised. Then read the expiry laws for your market before you write your terms, because minimum validity periods are set by law rather than by policy and are not something you can walk back later.
If you are already running one, the two that matter are accounting and liability — your finance team needs an outstanding-liability figure every month, and a defensible breakage estimate behind it — and fraud prevention, which is worth reading before you need it rather than after. Gift card fraud has a short window between code harvest and balance drain, and the controls that defeat it all have to be in place beforehand.
Guides, tools, and comparisons
Guides are reference material: how something works, what the rules are, what to consider. If you want to run your own numbers instead, the liability and breakage calculator applies the accounting guide's method to figures you supply.
If you are choosing a platform rather than running one, the buyer's guides by industry and the head-to-head comparisons are the better starting point — and both are explicit about when a competitor, or your POS's built-in gift cards, is the right answer.
These guides are general information for operators and finance teams, not accounting, tax, or legal advice. Rules differ by jurisdiction; check yours.
Gift card guides: frequently asked questions
- Do gift cards have to have an expiry date?
- No — and in most markets there is a legal minimum before they can expire at all. The US CARD Act sets five years from the date funds were last loaded, with several states going further; Australia mandates three years; Canadian provinces largely prohibit expiry on general-purpose cards. Many operators choose not to expire cards at all, since the administrative saving is small and the customer goodwill cost is not. The expiry laws guide covers each market.
- When can I recognise gift card revenue?
- Not when the card is sold. A gift card sale is deferred revenue — a contract liability — because you have taken payment for goods or services you have not yet delivered. Revenue is recognised as the card is redeemed, plus a proportional share of expected breakage where you can reliably estimate the redemption rate. The accounting and liability guide walks through the journal entries.
- What is gift card breakage?
- The portion of issued value you expect never to be redeemed. Industry-wide it commonly falls between 5% and 15% of total face value, though your own figure should come from your own redemption history. Under ASC 606 and IFRS 15 it is recognised gradually, in proportion to actual redemptions, rather than all at once when a card expires.
- What is the most common type of gift card fraud?
- Card draining — attackers tamper with cards on retail racks, harvest the codes, then drain the value as soon as a customer activates the card. It is a physical attack, so it is impossible against digital-only programs, which face different risks instead: credential stuffing, account takeover, and automated code testing. The fraud prevention guide covers all five patterns and the controls that defeat each.
- Should I offer store credit as well as gift cards?
- They use the same ledger, so if you already run gift cards the marginal cost is close to zero. The case for store credit is refund-to-credit — issuing credit rather than cash on returns and service recovery keeps revenue in the business, and credit tends to be redeemed more reliably than gift cards because it goes to someone who has already chosen you. The comparison guide covers when each instrument fits.