Why You Should Avoid Buying Gift Cards At Walmart

Gift cards make shopping easy and the abundance of choices available at big-box stores like Walmart make it incredibly convenient — there is definitely something to be said about doing all your holiday gift shopping at one time while you also pick up all your grocery and household items. But sometimes shopping at Walmart isn't nabbing you the best bang for your buck. There are other options for purchasing gift cards that make shopping just as convenient, if not more, and have great money saving deals to boot.

Some say the first gift cards were sold by Neiman Marcus, while others credit Blockbuster, but both these versions of history have one thing in common — the first gift card was introduced in 1994 and since then, the industry has taken off with no sign of slowing down. Regardless of who started them, it has become a big business worldwide. According to research conducted by Capital One, in 2023 the global gift card market was valued at a whopping $984.3 million. And that number is only expected to rise, with experts expecting it to reach $20.3 trillion in the next five years.

In some cases, as with many restaurant chains, it is best to go directly to the company, either to the website or to a brick-and-mortar location, for your gift cards since special deals are sometimes offered. While big-box stores offer the convenience of selling a variety of gift cards to different retailers in different amounts, many restaurants offer deals around the holidays that give you an extra gift card to use for yourself when buying a card as a gift for someone else (for example, purchasing a $100 gift card could nab you an additional $20 gift card as a bonus). Whether you want to use that extra card for yourself or include it in a gift to a friend to increase the amount you are gifting, this is an undeniably great deal.

Another economically sound option is to use an online gift card marketplace, like Card Cash, a site where consumers can sell unwanted gift cards and buy them at discounted prices. Deals can be found for more than 20% off the face value of the card, with cards available for more than 1100 popular retail brands ranging from department stores and restaurants to financial products and entertainment.

Card Cash has found that not only is the number of physical gift cards being purchased each year is growing by 9% annually, but the number of e-gift cards is growing astronomically as well, with an annual growth rate of 26%, but a whopping $3 billion is wasted each year in unused gift card balances. Companies like Card Cash are vital to maintaining the growth of this industry and providing consumers with great deals.

There are a few things you want to keep in mind about gift cards, like why you don't want to keep them in your wallet unless you are ready to use them in case your purse or wallet are lost or stolen. But more importantly, gift cards are susceptible to fraud. In recent years, gift card scams have made the news more and more frequently, especially during the holidays when gift card purchases seem to skyrocket.

Sometimes it seems that just buying a gift card from a display rack can get you scammed if someone has already nabbed the number off the back of the card in a scam known as gift card draining. In this scam, someone accesses the card number and pin off the back of the card, then reseals it so it is nearly impossible for the retailer or the buyer to see that the cared has been compromised. Once you load money on the card and activate it, the thieves are able to drain the money before you even have a chance to use it. Unfortunately, this cruel scam has been discovered at retailers nationwide, including Walmart, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has offered some advice on how to avoid it: closely inspect cards for signs of tampering before you purchase them, pay with a credit card, and keep receipts for all gift card activations in an effort to try to recuperate any losses.