Walmart, Target, and Best Buy have joined in implementing changes to their gift cards systems to help avoid scams and fraud. The changes were spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro in partnership with New Yorks AG Barbara Underwood. Here is the AG’s press release about the changes.
Specific measures mentioned in the press release (my commentary in the bullet points beneath):
- Reduction in Gift Card Limits – Retailers have significantly reduced both the monetary limit that can be placed on an individual gift card and the total amount that can be loaded onto gift cards during the same transaction.
- Specific measures mentioned in the news that Best Buy lowered their highest gift card denomination from $2,000 to $500, and Walmart dropped from $1,000 to $500. Target did not change its per-card limit ($2k).
- They also lowered the max you can buy in a single checkout: Walmart lowered from $5,000 to $1,000; Target lowered from $5,000 to $2,000; Best Buy lowered from $6,000 to $2,000.
- Totally understand the fraud prevention angle, but this is major (negative) news for resellers who utilize high gift cards all the time. I’m surprised I haven’t heard anyone mention this change. Maybe it hasn’t yet been implemented.
- Best Buy reduced the load amount of variable-load 3rd party gift cards to $200 back in May.
- Restrictions on Redemption of Retail Gift Cards for Other Gift Cards – Retailers placed new restrictions on the redemption of their retail gift cards for third party cards such as iTunes, Steam, or Google Play. Scammers often use the proceeds of fraud to purchase these third party cards because they can be resold on the black market.
- Indeed, gift card conversion at Best Buy died back in May. Not sure if this was related to the AG push. There might still be a few brands like XBOX for which conversion works.
- Â Gift card conversion at Target stores also died back in June.
- Last I know (from years ago), you can’t convert Walmart gift cards to Visa/MC/Amex gift cards. Not sure about third party. (This isn’t really lucrative regardless being that Walmart is from the most valuable gift cards available.)
- Enhanced Employee Training – Retailers have committed to enhancing employee training to help their employees identify the warning signs of gift card scams and warn potential victims when appropriate.
- In CVS they have a popup during the gift card checkout process to warn about such things. Wouldn’t be surprised to see other stores adapt the same.
Again, the lowering of the denomination at Walmart and Best Buy is a major negative change for resellers and shoppers, as well as the max per checkout.
Can confirm $2000 @BBY, ran into that yesterday.
Breakage? How about the FLOAT value?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/03/warren_buffett_explains_the_ge.html
Can at least confirm today that the $500 limit is in my store. self-checkout, it’ll error out and cancel your transaction when you try to load to a card that has $500 or more.
Sorry folks – breakage has nothing to do with this. There are two major scams totally separate from this. First is the ones where people are scammed into buying gift cards and giving to bad guys. The other one is where people STEAL credit cards and then buy gift cards before the credit cards are cancelled.
By the way, breakage only occurs because customers screw up and never use a card.
can buy 3rd party gift cards with walmart cards at sams
Outrageous. Why aren’t the state AGs cracking down on Amazon just cancelling thousands of dollars of gift card balance, or American Airlines cancelling sold gift cards. Gift cards are debt, which can be bought and sold.
In medical debt? Did your hospital sell that debt? Lucky you, just say the debt is now cancelled. Oh are you saying corporations get to play by different rules?
It is ridiculous how these gift cards are more or less money the retailers can keep if they feel so compelled. These fraud stories are giving them all the cover they need to wipe these liabilities clean.
just great. even more YMMV “federal law” recitation from managers…
Lol yup, they’ll use this as a catch-all for anything to do with gift cards now. Nothing like getting scolded by a walmart employee for something they’re clueless about!
What pathetic lip service. Wonder how much the AG’s office pocketed to ‘release’ this information at the busiest time of year for GC sales, that conveniently pad all these company’s bottom line. Collusion with other titans of industry as well as the government to boot. Bravo chaps, bravo.
The amount of fraud they were talking about is chump change compared to the billions from breakage these retailers benefit from.
Yeah, now more plastic/smaller denoms=better chance for breakage.
I’m guessing breakage is a term to describe the fees they’ll earn by selling more smaller value gift cards?
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/breakage.asp
Breakage means lost gift cards or gift cards with small amounts of money on it (think less than $1) that people do not redeem.
“breakage” in this sense refers to unredeemed gift cards, either small balances, lost gift cards, gift cards that sit on a shelf and never get used.
Employee of the month 17yr old kid will be ever vigilant.
my 19 year old daughter saved a couple $1600 that was being scammed at walmart here in PA. She refused to sell the gift card to them so they could pay the IRS with a google play card. The couple got angry and stormed out of the store.
Good for her. Too bad that couple was too ignorant to be grateful.
Sadly they probably bought one somewhere else.
I hope those ungrateful people did go buy gift cards elsewhere and sent them off to the scammers. Sounds like they deserve it.
Why is Walmart considered to be one of the best GC’s available?
You can buy soap, detergent, etc., things which are almost worth the same as cash.
And gasoline!
Not the best. It’s just one of the most valuable from a reselling perspective. You can get up to 95 cents on the dollar for Walmart giftcard.
Also not sold elsewhere really so it’s rarely discounted.