Do gift cards expire? The rules by country, and what to do with an expired card

Whether a gift card can expire is a question of where it was sold. Some places ban expiry outright, most set a floor of three or five years, and some leave it to whatever the retailer printed. The date on the card is what counts; the law decides whether that date was allowed.

Do gift cards expire?

Short answer: a card you paid money for usually keeps its value for at least several years, and in some places for ever, but a promotional voucher, a coupon or a loyalty reward can expire whenever the issuer says. The rules below apply to the first kind. For the second, the date in the message is the rule.

Two things are true everywhere. The issuer must tell you the expiry terms before you buy, in a form you can keep; and a card that has expired is not always worthless, because some expiry terms were never enforceable and some retailers reinstate value when asked.

These are the rules as published by each regulator in October 2026; a card bought before a rule took effect may be under the old terms, and the card's own terms can always be more generous.

United States: five years under the CARD Act

Federal law sets the floor. Under the CARD Act, implemented as Regulation E, 12 CFR 1005.20, the funds on a gift card may not expire earlier than five years after the card was issued or, for a reloadable card, five years after money was last loaded. A card may carry an earlier printed date, but the money behind it must still be honoured for the full five years.

Dormancy, inactivity or service fees are allowed only after a year without activity, no more than one a month, and only if disclosed up front. Loyalty, award and promotional cards are outside the rule.

States can go further, and California does. Civil Code section 1749.5 makes it unlawful to sell a gift certificate with an expiry date or a service fee at all; a card sold without a date is valid until redeemed or replaced. Since 1 April 2026 a card with less than $15 left must be cashed out on request, raised from $10 by SB 22.

The exceptions are the usual ones: promotional cards given for free, perishable food, and a narrow dormancy fee after two years of inactivity.

United Kingdom: no statutory minimum

The UK has no law setting a minimum validity for gift cards. Which? makes the comparison directly: Ireland requires five years, but in the UK there are no such regulations, and you are bound by the terms made known at the time of purchase. In Which?'s survey of high-street retailers most gave at least two years, with a range from no expiry at all down to twelve months, and some reset the clock on every transaction or balance check.

The only backstop is the Consumer Rights Act 2015, under which a term that causes a significant imbalance to the consumer's detriment is not binding. Whether a short expiry fails that test has not been settled by a court, and a clearly disclosed expiry is generally treated as enforceable. In practice: read the terms before buying, and ask the retailer if a card has lapsed, because extensions are discretionary.

EU examples: Ireland and Germany

Rules differ between EU member states. Ireland is the strict end: under the Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Act 2019, a voucher sold since 2 December 2019 must be valid for at least five years or have no expiry, the expiry must be given on paper or by email, the trader cannot insist the full value is spent in one go, and a remaining balance of €1 or more must be refunded or re-issued.

Vouchers valid for three months or less, promotional and loyalty vouchers, and refund credit are excluded. The CCPC enforces it: in July 2026 JD Sports agreed to honour over 5,000 vouchers it had issued with a one-year expiry.

Germany has no gift-card statute; the general limitation period applies. The Verbraucherzentrale explains that a voucher is redeemable for three years under section 195 BGB, counted from the end of the year it was bought, so a May 2022 voucher ran to 31 December 2025.

A shorter printed period is allowed only if it is not unreasonably short; if it is, the voucher remains redeemable for the three years, and a voucher that lapsed early gives a claim to the cash value within that period.

Canada and Australia: no expiry, or three years

Gift card rules in Canada are provincial. Ontario's Consumer Protection Act bans expiry dates on most gift cards and bans activation, service and dormancy fees; the exceptions are cards for one specific service and cards issued for charity, and shopping-mall cards, which keep full value for fifteen months and may then lose up to $2.50 a month.

Quebec's Office de la protection du consommateur says the same: no expiry date on a prepaid card that may be used as cash, in force since 30 June 2010, with fees allowed only on multi-merchant and bank-issued cards.

Australia sets a floor instead of a ban. Since 1 November 2019 the Australian Consumer Law requires most gift cards to be redeemable for at least three years from the date of supply. The expiry must be shown on the card, either as a date or as a period with the issue date alongside it, and a card that never expires must say so.

Post-purchase fees are banned: activation, account-keeping, balance-enquiry and inactivity fees among them. Reloadable cards, promotional giveaways, time-limited cards and cards sold at a genuine discount are exempt.

Israel: five years for purchase vouchers

Israel's Consumer Protection Law, section 14h, covers the tav kniya, a voucher bought for money and redeemable up to its face value. An issuer that limits its validity may not set a period shorter than five years, and must print the issue date and the expiry date prominently on the voucher alongside its name.

The Payment Services (Exemption) Regulations 2022 apply the same five-year floor to a payment instrument such as a gift voucher. A voucher for a specific product with no sum printed on it is treated differently, so check which kind you hold.

What to do with an expired gift card

1. Check whether it could legally expire. Under the rules above, a card sold in Ontario, Quebec or California should not have expired at all, a US card should have kept its funds for five years, and an Irish or Israeli card for five, an Australian for three. If the printed date breaks the rule, the card is still good.
2. Check the balance anyway. Many issuers do not switch a card off on the date; the balance enquiry on the issuer's site tells you what the till will say.
3. Ask the retailer to reinstate it. Take the card and proof of purchase. Goodwill extensions are common, especially for cards a few months past the date.
4. Escalate if the rule is on your side. The CCPC in Ireland, the ACCC in Australia, the state attorney general in the US and the provincial consumer office in Canada all take complaints about unlawful expiry.
5. If the retailer has gone into administration, ask the administrator whether cards are being honoured; if you paid by credit card, a chargeback or section 75 claim may apply.
6. Record what you lost. It is the number that tells you whether your tracking system works.

The law sets a floor; it does not stop you forgetting. Nearly half of US adults hold an unused card despite a five-year minimum, and the research on the deadline effect says a long expiry is exactly why: a card that is safe for five years waits five years. A forgotten card has the same shape as a forgotten subscription, small, silent and recurring.

The fix is a list sorted by expiry, reviewed weekly, with the card captured the day it arrives; how to keep track of gift cards and vouchers is the whole method.

How PeakVoucher does it

PeakVoucher records the expiry from the message or the paste and sorts the wallet by it: anything inside sixty days rises in amber, under fourteen days it turns red, and a voucher with no expiry simply sits in the live group. The insights screen shows what is at risk in the next two weeks and what has already been lost to expiry, by category, so the number this guide is about is one you can see rather than guess.

Hen Eytan · Founder, UPeak

Builds the UPeak apps and writes up the research behind them.