How To Activate Gift Cards Without Buying Them

If you see a message that says that your card has not been properly activated, it might not have been activated by the retailer who sold the card. The best option is to go back to the retailer and try to resolve it with them.

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (Credit CARD) Act provides several protections for consumers who purchase certain types of gift cards, including store and restaurant (also known as merchant) gift cards. These cards can only be redeemed at the stores and restaurants that sell them. Bank gift cards, which carry the logo of a payment card network (e.g., Visa, MasterCard), are also subject to Credit CARD Act protections and can be used wherever the brand is accepted.

How To Activate Gift Cards Without Buying Them

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Under the law, a gift card cannot expire until at least five years from the date it was activated. The law also places general limitations on fees. For instance, the card issuer cannot charge a dormancy or inactivity fee on a gift card unless there has been no activity for one year and the card clearly states its policy toward that fee. In addition, some states have separate laws that provide added protection in certain circumstances.

Another common scam is someone who poses as an attorney for a family member and claims that the family member is in trouble with the law and needs assistance. They contact you by phone or email, and ask you to purchase gift cards in specific amounts to pay them. These are all red flags to a scam, and once you purchase the gift cards, the scammers will tell you to provide them with the code numbers and PINs that are usually located on the back of cards so that the scammer can redeem them.

It is hard to understate the popularity of gift cards. As of 2015, more than 90% of Americans surveyed had purchased a gift card. And by 2018, the total volume of gift cards is projected to reach $160 billion.

State and federal consumer laws offer gift card consumers many protections, including required disclosures, limits on fees and expiration dates, and access to replacement cards. This Alert explains the different types of gift cards and the rules designed to protect consumers. It also provides guidelines for purchasing gift cards and tips for spotting and stopping different gift card scams.

Consumers who purchase merchant-issued gift cards indicate how much they want to spend and, in return, the merchant should disclose any applicable fees, charges, expiration dates, and other restrictions.

Even if there is no expiration date, encourage recipients to use the gift cards shortly after receiving them. After a few months, it is increasingly likely the certificate or card will be lost or forgotten!

Consider purchasing gift cards directly from the merchant or issuer, either online or at their brick-and-mortar locations. Avoid purchasing from a merchant that is struggling to stay in business or has filed for bankruptcy.

Financial institutions are also prohibited from charging inactivity or service fees on gift cards that they issue within a year of purchase. After a year of purchase, they may charge fees, but they cannot charge more than one fee per month.

Scammers favor gift cards because they are easy for people to find and buy, and they have fewer protections for buyers compared to some other payment options. Scammers can get quick cash, the transaction is largely irreversible, and they can remain anonymous.

Scammers also tell people where to buy the gift cards. In the first nine months of 2021, people who reported losing money buying gift cards mentioned Target stores more than other retailers. Reports suggest that Walmart, Best Buy, CVS, and Walgreens stores are also popular with scammers.

5 From January 2021 through September 2021, 12,239 people reported losing $35.5 million to business impersonators using gift cards, and 7,844 people reported losing $39.6 million to government impersonators using gift cards. Excluding reports that did not indicate a contact method, a phone call was the method of contact in 37% of reports indicating gift cards as the method of payment, followed by email (18%) and social media (16%).

When an Illinois woman received a check in the mail for $4,700 with instructions to buy eight $500 prepaid gift cards and pocket the remaining money, she thought it was her lucky day [

In another variation of this gift card scam, fraudsters claim to be representatives from

Or maybe a state trooper calls to say that you owe hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets and that the only way to remove them from your record is by phoning in the numbers from an Amazon gift card to pay off your fines.

If you do get such calls, emails or texts, ignore them. They're examples of gift card fraud, a type of con in which criminals trick victims into either sending them online gift cards or reading the numbers on the back of a gift card over the phone.

Fortunately, spotting and avoiding different types of gift card scams isn't overly complicated. Here's a look at some of the more common gift card scams and the steps you can take to avoid falling for them.

The scammers will then demand that victims purchase a gift card and either send them an electronic version of the card or provide them with the gift card's number and PIN. Once they have this information, they'll use it to buy whatever they want with the gift card, and victims will be out the money they spent on it.

Scammers might use a bot called GiftGhostBot to scour retailers' online gift card balance check systems. The bot is searching this system for gift cards that have been activated. When the bot finds one, criminals use the gift card number to make purchases themselves or they sell the gift card's information on the dark web. When you use your card, you discover that the balance has been drained and the gift card is useless.

Sometimes a store's cashier is in on the scam. Say you purchase a gift card at a department store. The cashier might activate that gift card but instead of handing it back to you, switches the card with one that hasn't been activated. The cashier then keeps the activated card and gives you a card that doesn't work. The cashier can then use the activated card that you bought to make purchases.

Another popular gift card scam? Thieves, often armed with a magstripe reader that reads the numbers stored in a magnetic stripe on gift cards, grabs handfuls of gift cards from stores such as Walmart or Target. The thief scans the gift cards with the reader, storing dozens of card numbers. The scammer than puts the gift cards back on display and leaves.

The scammer next calls the customer service numbers on these cards and enters the copied gift card numbers. This will tell the scammer if someone has purchased and activated the gift card and how much of a balance is left on the card. The scammer can then use the gift card number to make online purchases, draining the balance of a card you bought.

Other scammers lie about the value of the gift cards they are selling online. They might claim that the gift card is for $50. You pay for the card, receive it, and find out that it only has $5 left in its balance.

Yes, you can. You can buy physical gift cards from the Shopify Hardware Store in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, European Union, and Australia. Learn more about selling physical gift cards.

Laws and regulations about gift cards vary based on region. To determine any regulations that apply to you, such as whether to charge tax or for how long a gift card must stay valid, consult a local tax or legal expert.Yes, you can issue a gift card without a customer purchasing it (for example, "Here's $10 off your next purchase"). However, any gift cards that are issued create a liability to provide future sales. Depending on your region's laws surrounding gift cards, you might not be allowed to add an expiry