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PFT #91 - Personal Finance Tip of the Week: Gift Card Management
The United States culture tends to recognize many types of celebrations and this has created a common theme of replacing presents with gift cards. They are easy to purchase, simple to use and the beauty is that people can shop for what they want without having to wrap and return items.
Throughout the years gift cards can accumulate in wallets or desk drawers and many people are waiting to redeem them for a special occasion. According to USA Today, 47% of Americans have one unused gift card, voucher or store credit, and on average each person has $175 in unspent gift cards.
So the most common question that we receive is what happens to the cards if they go unused?
- For starters a federal law 2010 says that a gift card can’t expire for five years from the time it was purchased or from the last time someone added money to it. In some states, the expiration period is longer.
- With generic cash cards such as MasterCard or Visa, they begin to incur
inactivity fees after one year, which eats away at their value.
80 cents per dollar.
4. Depending on what state you live in, they may have unclaimed property
programs for unused cards. The thought is that issuing card companies
haven't provided a service to earn the money, so they don’t get to keep it.
So chalk up a win for the little guy.
5. If you have long-term unused cards and want to claim them, then you can
search for unclaimed property in the state that the card was issued to
see if you have money coming to you.
6. Additionally, you should periodically look on your state’s website to see what else may be
coming to you which is known as escheating. From there, just follow the steps to reclaim
your money. So to wrap things up, gift cards do not need to be wrapped; however, they can
be lost, misplaced or lose their value. The best way to manage this is to keep them
organized and simply use them.
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