Give a gift card for a store or restaurant the person you’re shopping for already uses. A Visa or Mastercard gift card costs several dollars more than it holds, and its last few dollars are hard to spend. A $50 card bought straight from the store or restaurant costs $50.
At Target, a $50 Visa or Mastercard gift card costs $55. The extra $5 is a purchase fee, and none of it reaches the person who opens the card.
Target’s fee on a $25 Visa gift card is $4, or 16% of the gift. In return, the card works almost anywhere. You don’t need that when you know where the person already spends, since a card for their usual store or restaurant goes to things they’d buy anyway.
The last few dollars on these cards are the other catch. Visa tells gift card holders to make sure the balance covers the whole purchase when they shop online. At a restaurant, Visa adds, the card may be checked for 20% more than the bill to cover the tip. A $45 dinner then needs $54 on the card, so a $50 card can be declined.
Choose the card by where they already spend: the grocery store a family shops at weekly, a commuter’s usual gas station, the streaming service they pay for, or the coffee shop they stop at before work. A card they’ll use up in a few visits never leaves a balance sitting in a drawer.
Buying on the brand’s own website keeps the card off store racks, where someone could tamper with it. If you buy one off a rack instead, check that the protective sticker is intact and the PIN on the back isn’t showing, as the Federal Trade Commission advises. Give the receipt along with the card, and keep a photo of both on your phone. The card number and receipt help you report a lost card or fraud to the company that issued it.
For someone whose favorite store you can’t name, put $50 in cash or a check in a holiday card instead of a Visa gift card. You skip the $5 fee, and they can spend every dollar.
Subscribe and we'll send you 101 Essential Money Tips to get you started.
The 101 money moves that matter most, from the foundations to protecting what you’ve built.
Advertiser Disclosure: Many or all of the offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us, and some companies pay for sponsored content. That compensation may influence which products we cover and where and how they appear on a page, including the order in which they appear. We do not include every company or offer available in the marketplace.
