Do gift cards expire? Does a gift certificate's value depreciate? How long can I keep them for?
It depends on:  In Canada, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia have each enacted legislation to stop gift cards/certificates from expiring. Cards issued before the effective date are still subject to the old rules.  The legislation came into effect: There are several common themes: There are still some unusual exemptions such as mall gift cards in Ontario, Manitoba: Ontario is the first jurisdiction in   Canada to regulate gift cards. [...] Mall cards (e.g. Eaton Centre gift   card) will be covered by the expiry   date ban and the new disclosure rules.   However, these cards can temporarily   maintain their current fee structure   while the provincial government   examines options on how to best   regulate these types of cards. This   will allow more time to develop an   approach that strikes the right   balance for consumers and businesses. For specific details see the appropriate link.
It depends completely on the nature of the takeover. When a business is bought, the new owner takes on the obligations of the prior owner, the debts don't just go away. When a business files for bankruptcy, its debts may get discharged, and gift card holders can easily be the first ones to get nothing back. A case in point was Sharper Image who stopped honoring gift cards even while the doors were open as they filed for bankruptcy. Buy a prepaid gift card, such as a MasterCard or Visa gift card. You can find them at the grocery store, a pharmacy, or your local bank. Provide this on their online form. If anyone steals your gift card information, you will have already used the funds for your purchase and there is no further risk to you. "Nowadays, some banks in some countries offer things like temporary virtual cards for online payments. They are issued either free of charge or at a negligible charge, immediately, via bank's web interface (access to which might either be free or not, this varies). You get a separate account for the newly-issued ""card"" (the ""card"" being just a set of numbers), you transfer some money there (same web-interface), you use it to make payment(s), you leave $0 on that ""card"" and within a day or a month, it expires. Somewhat convenient and your possible loss is limited tightly. Check if your local banks offer this kind of service." Parents are eminently capable of gifting to their children.  If it's a gift call it a gift. If it's not a gift, it's either a loan or a landmine for some future interpersonal familial interaction (parent-child or sibling-sibling).  I an concerned by some phrasing in the OP that it is partially down this path here.  If it's a loan, it should have the full ceremony of a loan: written terms and a payment plan (which could fairly be a 0% interest, single balloon payment in 10 years or conditional on sale of a house or such; it's still not a gift). Good question. I have no idea what legal recourse they have to reverse gift and credit card purchases.  Cash people are probably safe.  Like I said, it's unlikely they will do anything, but I would not be holding on to gift cards purchased via gift cards if it was my money on the line. If you go to a grocery store and purchase retail gift cards along with other products, and you pay with a credit card, your credit card company generally does not know what you spent the money on; they don't get an itemized receipt.* If this is the case with your rewards card, then yes, you would get the cashback reward on the gift cards, because all the credit card company knows is that you spent $100 at the grocery store; they don't know (or care, really) that $50 of it was for an Olive Garden gift card. This, of course, should be fairly easy to test.  Buy the gift card, wait for your statement, and see if they included the purchase when calculating your rewards. * Note: I don't have an American Express card, but from some quick googling I see that it is possible that American Express does actually receive itemized billing details on your purchases from some merchants.  If your grocery store is sending this data to AmEx, it is possible that the gift cards could be excluded from rewards.  But again, I suggest you just test it out and see. Is there a point after which they legally unable to charge me? No. If you gave a check, then the bank may bounce it as stale after 6 months, but doesn't have to. With debit/credit transactions, they post as they're processed, and some merchants may not sync their terminals or deposit their manual slips often. As the world becomes more and more connected this becomes extremely rare, but still happens. Technically your promise to pay is a contract which never expires, and they can come after you years later to collect. This arrangement might be a bit of a pain, but what about Visa gift card(s)? The transfer of money just doesn't happen if the money isn't already on the card. See here. Definitely not with gift cards and to a lesser degree not even with debit cards.  For most transactions they work the same but you'll run into problems when dealing with situations where a hold is placed that's higher than the transaction amount. This is the norm with gas purchases--at the time you run the card you don't know how much gas you're going to pump so they put through an authorization for some fixed amount--say $75 or $100.  If you do not have this much available it will fail and you can't use the card to purchase the gas.  Unless you're living paycheck to paycheck the debit card should work in this case but the gift card very well might not. I've also seen this happen on a larger scale with a car rental.  A co-worker only had a debit card--and the substantial hold the rental car place wanted to put on the card was unacceptable. The first thing I assess when looking at new credit cards is whether it has no annual fee, the second thing I look at is how long the interest free period is. I always pay my credit card off in full just before the due date. Any rewards program is a bonus. My main credit card is with CBA, I have a credit limit of $20K and pay no annual fee. I get a bonus point for every $ I spend on it, for which I exchange for store gift cards to help with my everyday spending. Approximately 3500 point would get me a $25 gift card. But my main reward with the card is the interest I save by keeping my own money in a Home Loan Offset account whilst I spend with the Bank's money. Then I pay the full amount off by the due date so I do not pay any interest on the credit card. I only use my credit cards for purchases I would usually make anyway and to pay bills, so my spending would be the same with or without a credit card. I can usually save over $500 each year off my Home Loan interest and get about $350 worth of gift cards each year. If I didn't have any Home Loans then I would keep my money in a high interest depost account so I would be increasing my interest payments each year. Sure you can probably get credit cards with more generous rewards programs, but how much are you paying each year in annual fees, and if you don't have an interest free period and you don't pay off all the amount due each month how much are you paying in interest on the card? This is what you need to way up when looking at rewards programs on offer. Nothing is for free, well almost nothing ! Your relative in the US could buy a pre-paid Visa (aka Visa gift card) and give you the numbers on that to pay.  They're available for purchase at many grocery/convenience stores.  In most (all??) cases there'll be a fee of a several dollars charged in addition to the face value of the card. The biggest headache I can think of would be that pre-paid cards are generally only available in $25/50/100 increments; unless the current SAT price matches one of the standard increments they'll have to buy the next card size up and then get the remaining money off it in a separate transaction.  A grocery store would be one of the easier places for your relative to do this because cashiers there are used to splitting transactions across multiple payment sources (something not true at most other types of business) due to regularly processing transactions partially paid for via welfare benefits. "The ""hold"" is just placeholder that prevents you from overspending until the transaction is settled. The merchant isn't ""holding"" your money, your bank or card provider is protecting itself from you overdrawing. In general, it takes 1-3 days for a credit transaction to settle. With a credit card, this usually isn't an issue, unless you have a very low credit line or other unusual things going on. With pre-paid and debit cards, it is an issue, since your spending power is contingent upon you having an available balance. I'm a contrarian on this topic, but I don't see any compelling reason to use debit or stored value cards, other than preventing yourself from overspending. I've answered a few other questions in detail in this area, if you're interested." "There are only two things you can directly do with the money in an Amazon gift card: you can keep the gift card, or you can put the money into your Amazon account.  There aren't any other options.  You can't deposit the value into a bank account or anything like that.  So, as far as safety, those are the only options you need to consider, because there's nothing else you can do. (Okay, there is one other thing you can do: you could sell the card to someone else, or barter it for something you want.  But you can do that with anything.) The ""gift card"" is basicaly just a string of numbers and letters that you put into your Amazon account and it credits you with the appropriate amount of money.  So yes, it can be stolen.  If you haven't redeemed it yet, someone could find the code by hacking your email or looking over your shoulder or whatever.  If they redeem it, you won't be able to do so. As for your edit: If I don't transfer the balance of the Amazon egift card to my Amazon account, can I transfer the balance to other accounts or use the card to buy other gift cards? If you don't transfer it to your account, you can transfer the balance to another account by giving the code to someone else and letting them deposit it in their account.  You still won't be able to buy other gift cards with it, because you can't buy anything with it until it's deposited in an Amazon account, and once it's deposited in an Amazon account, you can't buy gift cards with it because of their policy. If you don't want the restrictions imposed by Amazon, don't buy Amazon gift cards; instead, just use your actual money to buy things.  If you're worried about the cards being stolen, just deposit them into your account right away and you eliminate the risk of them being stolen.  If, as you say, you bought the cards for yourself, there's no reason not to do this; presumably you bought them so you could buy things on Amazon, and you'll have to deposit them into your account eventually anyway to do that, so just put them in right away. I don't know specifically how Walmart cards work, but I assume they're the same.  In general, anything called a ""gift card"" offered by a particular retailer works the same way: you can't do anything with it except buy products at that retailer. The only thing that really makes Amazon different is that the only way to use your card is to add the money to your Amazon account, because the only way to pay for things on Amazon is with an Amazon account.  There's no way to spend just some of the value; you have to deposit it all into your account.  With gift cards for retailers with physical locations, you can usually use the value up piecemeal, by actually going to a store and spending just enough to buy something.  (I assume Walmart works this way, although I don't know if you can use an e-gift card this way there.)" Usually points have different value depending on what you use it for and how much of them you convert. For many providers, if you have enough (10000+ usually) points, it is possible to convert them 1:1 (which means 1 point converted to 1 cent) to either cash or something that is almost as good as cash ($100 gift card for some popular store or $100 Amazon.com certificate, etc.). Some cards have more exotic ways of getting best value - such as transferring money to pay student loans, retirement accounts, etc. So to get the best value, I'd recommend to make a list of what you can get from your program (most types of reward are uniform - i.e., many gift cards with the same price, so the work may be less than it seems) and calculate point values of each of those. If you want to be really precise take into account that if you buy something with points, you do not earn points on that, which reduces the value a little. In general, these days it is very rare to get a card that produces more than 1% back, though some have up to 5% for certain categories of purchases. Yes, you can depreciate gifts to your business subject to the special rules in § 1011 and Regulation § 1.1011–1 and 1.167(g)–1. It is dual basis property so when you sell the item your gain/loss basis will be different. Adjusted basis of the donor for gain, FMV on the date received for the loss. Minus any depreciation you add, of course, in both cases.