article
There are few things comedians and personal finance writers agree on, but one comes up every holiday season: “Gift cards. For when you want to give someone money, except worse.” Like many topics in financial infrastructure, they’re a fascinating Gordian knot of user needs, business incentives, government regulation, and infrastructural weirdness. Let’s start unraveling it.
Gift cards are a loosely-regulated quasi-financial product and frequently misunderstood. Here's how they operate under the hood.
We are not affiliated with Patrick McKenzie. This unofficial audio edition is available to listen to and share for free. Read the original on Bits about Money.
Duration
~15 minutes (14K characters)
Release date
Dec 13, 2021