More than you want to know about gift cards
bam.kalzumeus.com
bam.kalzumeus.com
I just do it anyway. It's a more universal gift card without fees and expiration dates...
Anyone who tries to put me down for doing so will simply not be receiving a gift from me next year... Screw stressful stores. plastic cards, and standing in line, my method is much more "green"... :P
The past four Christmas I've sent bank transfers on the 25th.
Shopping malls, ATMs and banks get just too crowded those days.
"Red envelopes are gifts presented at social and family gatherings such as weddings or holidays such as Chinese New Year. The red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and is a symbol to ward off evil spirits. It is also gifted when a person is visiting as a gesture of kindness for visiting. The act of requesting red packets is normally called tao hongbao or yao lishi, and in the south of China, dou li shi. Red envelopes are usually given out to the younger generation who are normally still in school or unemployed."
I loved Sacred Economics and I'm all about figuring out how to reintegrate potlatching and other gift economy ideas into the western world. We desperately need mechanisms other than inheritance for transferring wealth to the younger generations. So I'd love to hear that these practices are occurring outside extended families, but that's not been my impression.
Traditionally, there's some nuances to it, e.g. it's often a tradition associated with visiting someone, and it is meant to have symbolic intent, meaning that it doesn't fit settings like secret santas.
I know they do it in South Africa (along with a "13th month" of pay), and I'm assuming the US too.
Outside of those two, I don't really know of any other Western cultures where tipping is much of a thing at all - let alone big tips at the end of the year.
Maybe nowadays this is the Amazon and Deliveroo zero-hours-contract drivers.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2524513/En...
The "sanitary operatives" in the UK used to ring your doorbell in the run-up to Christmas, more-or-less demanding a tip. If you didn't tip, then you risked having your Christmas rubbish languishing for a couple of weeks, or even strewed over your garden path. Happily, that practice is now ILLEGAL.
When my dad sent me to the barbers for a haircut, he gave me a coin to tip the barber. I think the idea was that the barber might remember me (9 year-old kid)! I don't have much hair now, so I don't have to tip barbers. But I tip taxi-drivers, evern though I know I'll probably never see them again, and if I do, they csrtainly won't remember me.
I tip waiters, because I believe they depend on tips to get decent pay. I hate it that this is necessary. I also HATE that tips for waiters go into the tip-jar, and are shared by kitchen staff and management.
People should get proper pay. How hard is that to understand?
I jokingly complained that I was getting a bad deal: I didn’t get red packets as a child, but I had to give them away as an adult. But my aunt-in-law put it most amusingly:
“Giving red packets is even luckier than receiving them.”
How so?
“Do you have money to put in the packet and still eat? That’s pretty lucky."
People’s tastes can be very specific and so it may be very difficult to buy them a gift they’ll truly appreciate and enjoy unless you’re very close. It’s much easier to buy a gift card for a retailer (coffee, books, video games, makeup, fashion) in their area of interest than to try to buy something truly suited to their tastes. This is especially the case for casual acquaintances such as coworkers.
I'm terrible at gifts, but I'd never give cash/gift cards (cash that expires and you can only spend in one shop)
The point of a gift is to show that you understand your friend/family member and have spent your own time to try to make them happy
For a co-worker you should probably think a bit harder
In some places, gift cards cannot legally expire. Other objections still apply, but fortunately not always that one, which I agree is gross.
I know some people are “hard to buy for” but this might be an indication that you shouldn’t be giving them a gift. If you don’t know them well enough to have a gift idea, or don’t feel comfortable asking for ideas, are you really obligated to get them something?
I have rather a small kitchen, and I like cooking. In the same way that a carpenter prefers to choose his own tools, I prefer to choose my own kitchen implements. I'd prefer to receive consumable ingredients that can last a year or two on the shelf (no, not stem ginger in brandy, thanks all the same).
Gift cards are the worst of both worlds - just as impersonal as cash, but even more limiting.
So she bought an Amazon gift card. And then she created a wishlist of items she thought the mother might need, doing the research to find reputable brands, unique solutions to problems, "best mom gadgets", etc (such as the pacifier that you can put liquids into; it lets you get liquid medicines into the baby, like cough syrup, without stress). She sent the gift card, and the link to the wishlist with an explanation.
It was both a pragmatic and thoughtful approach, without the risk of buying something she already had, or didn't need or want.
I didn't m to sound facetious but now I'm thinking about the ways of making a SaaS out of this : the incentive for the giver is easy enough ; the card maker gets a cut ; AWS should give you a great deal on hosting..
I realize this was just a casual example, but kids under two generally shouldn't be given any cough or cold meds (there are no over-the-counter cough meds for kids <2 sold in the US).
Definitely still useful for other meds though.
If you are unlucky enough to have to get medicine into a baby, something has happened and you are hopefully under the supervision of a doctor or a nurse who can aid with the practicalities.
Small babies are delicate machines and gifting any sort of medical aid "just in case" might give the recipient ideas. Feeding a baby cough syrup may have been just an example but sounds downright dangerous. Please be careful.
It is a great idea, but it makes more sense when the recipient does the registering IMO.
If Christmas weren't a thing, I'd've bought some new cycling gloves a month or two ago, but as it is, I'll keep riding with my very-torn-up pair until Christmas so my family can continue to partake in the gift giving ritual we enjoy without having to resort to finding random stuff the recipient probably doesn't actually want.
The curse of having enough money and not wanting a lot of things. :-)
https://www.jetpens.com/Kurochiku-Mejirushi-Sticky-Notes/ct/...
They aren't fancy or anything, but they scale up well and folks will look forward to it.
Even if the recipient doesn't care for truffles (vegan, weight-loss dieter) they like the packaging, and they have something to share. And truffles are easy to make.
For a few years now we've bought a bunch of peaches sometime in the summer and made a bunch of peach jam, put it in pretty little jars, and brought them to holiday gatherings with my family around Philadelphia. It's always a hit.
The thing is, they actually have good peaches up there too! I know this because I ate so many of them when I lived near a good farmer's market there!
Philly peaches: I believe that Robert E. Lee's troops got through a lot of "foraged" (stolen) peaches on the march to Gettysburg. Presumably squits was a big problem in the confederate army.
I hate buying birthday and christmas gifts, and I don't expect to receive them either. I don't have space in my small flat for stuff that doesn't earn the space it occupies, and I assume my relatives don't either.
My policy is to buy presents for people when I find something that I think they'd want. I usually check with them first, so that I'm getting the correct style or model. This process isn't synchronised with any anniversaries, except that if it's near an anniversary, a date-adjustment might occur. For an occasion for which some kind of gift would be expected (e.g. 21st, birth, retirement), if I don't find the right thing, they get cash.
I prefer not to give cash ("it's the thought that counts", and giving cash doesn't involve a lot of thought), and in practice I only give cash to my grown-up kids, who understand how I operate. The hardest target is small kids, who enjoy unwrapping things and enjoying them immediately. I've given cash to my toddler granddaughters too, though (via the investment fund their parents operate); but not on their birthdays.
My late father didn't want people to give him "hard" gifts - stuff that he had to keep somewhere, or worse: put on display to prove he appreciated it. He preferred gifts of food, or other stuff that could be consumed fairly quickly. I'm the same, and I treat others as I would like to be treated myself. I have enough stuff (but I'm running low on caviar).
I think a random, well-targeted, gift on a non-anniversary, coming out of blue sky, is much more exciting than yet another plastic birthday present, arriving on the same day as all the other anniversary presents, that will last a couple of weeks before going to landfill.
I often forget my own birthday. I'm fine with a Happy Birthday phone-call - or none. If someone needs an anniversary gift, for whatever reason, I visit a few card shops, and choose a really snazzy, expensive one. Some of my rels are still displaying fancy commercial cards I sent them ten years ago; I'm still displaying a hand-made card drawn by my 2-year-old granddaughter.
My christmas-card list is zero lines long.
But the idea is that a gift is personal, and that cash is impersonal. The universality is exactly what makes it impersonal.
The ideal gift (again, in US cultural context) is one that reflects something unique about the giver, or recipient, or the relationship between them. An exchange of cash is something that happens between strangers on a regular basis.
(Also could get awkward if it was the same amount.)
My family has been moving away from gift giving, in favor of spending time together instead. Show people you care for them all year long and don't buy in to these over-commercialized traditions.
"Please treat yourself to a meal at my favourite restaurant, X."
"I think you can buy some plants for the garden."
I think "solved" here should be "mitigated". Certainly culturally it seems lots of people don't consider this equivalent although logically it could be seen as "better".
If you do something like that, you are making your gift conditional.
I do not want to carry a stupid gift card around with me, or have to remember to use it, or how much more is left on it. And the principle of it is that the cash they could have given you is now earning the retailer interest?
A gift card (at least if it isn't something generic like Amazon or Starbucks) at least says "I wasn't sure what to get you, but I know you like X-type things, and store Y is all about X-type things, so here's a gift card for store Y". I think this sort of thing can work well for hobbies where a gift-giver might not be able to reasonably choose what to get. Like, for example, I wouldn't mind a gift card to a hobbyist electronics store like Adafruit, but, given the nature of the things I buy there, I would never expect any of my friends (or even my girlfriend) to know what I'd find useful from there without asking me for a specific thing to get for me, which would ruin any amount of surprise. But on receiving that gift card, I'd think it was a nice surprise, and very thoughtful that they remembered that time I was talking about how I bought an ESP32 dev board and was playing around with some electronics projects.
But yeah, if someone gave me an Amazon gift card, I would find that as thoughtless as cash (fortunately still easy to use, since I buy things from Amazon all the time, and I can easily just add the gift card to my account and then not worry about it anymore). And if someone gave me a Starbucks gift card, they clearly do not know me at all, as I don't drink coffee.
Again, totally agree that gift cards are worse than cash from a usability perspective, but I think they're less crass. You might be unhappy to receive a gift card, but there are many people who would fell warmer and fuzzier receiving a (thoughtfully-selected) gift card, rather than cash.
> And the principle of it is that the cash they could have given you is now earning the retailer interest?
As the article says, vanishingly few retailers make interest or investment returns off gift card money. Nearly all of them consider it working capital and use it to help run their businesses.
Either way, I find this to be a weird objection. A gift is about the giver and the receiver. If a third party makes interest off some unrelated side transaction, it's kinda petty to be worked up about it.
If you really do not know what the other person would like as a gift, and do not want to do cash, a regular phone calls I think is more meaningful. I want for almost nothing except home cooked food that would be given as a gift, but just calling and spending a few min to say hello and update on happenings in your life is much preferred.
I've never purchased a gift card. I've received them (for participating in a COVID survey actually - but I'd have participated for nothing), and I gave them to people. If they'd given me cash, I'd probably have kept it.
Yass. If I'm giving a gift, as often as not it expresses me, rather than the giftee. E.g. I don't know what the giftee likes to read; so I buy them a book that I'd like to be given. Even if they don't like the book, they have the opportunity to know me better. Signed editions are cool, because they may have resale value.
And it's absolutely OK to ebay my gifts; once it's given, it's not mine any more, and it's yours to dispose of as you see fit. I'd prefer if you kept it and used it, of course; but gifting is intrisically haphazard. For me, it's essential that you completely let go of what you've given.
Note, however, that I'm assuming that the gift card is well selected. In practice, I find that this is usually not the case--probably because the giver was simply looking for an alternative to giving cash. Under these circumstances I agree that cash is actually better. There are few gifts worse than a gift card to a restaurant you don't like, for products you aren't interested in, or to a totally generic store.
I think the gold standard remains a thoughtful, nonmonetary gift. But that's often just not realistic.
Edit: A sibling comment points out that this is all cultural. And they're exactly right. So I suppose I should specify that I'm a Christmas-celebrating American. YMMV for gift-giving holidays and rituals from other traditions.
I also looked up apps that can be gift card aggregators and will include that next time too.
—-
I did a similar thing when I gifted Alexa Echo Show devices (the ones with a screen). These instructions included how to use a separate Amazon account so the device won’t get your contacts etc, if the person wants that privacy. Along with two 3 minute videos setting up the device and going over a few basic aspects of it. This would be a ton of work for one gift. I have now done this gift 5x and primarily to average technical people.
Basically what I’m saying is. Gift giving is hard. It makes me super anxious and stressed. I think I’ve found my own niche/trick of including personalized instructions and information. I’ve never tried this on an equally techy person though!
Personal financial columnists and comedians do not understand the jobs that gift cards do. They are not cash-but-worse-in-every-way. Closed loop cards allow a giver to personalize a gift to the recipient. A Barnes and Noble gift card to a favorite niece tells that niece that you remember she is a reader, unlike those uncreative family members who would just give her cash.
If anyone’s psychology is being manipulated, it is likely the recipient, on a theory very similar to the one that causes many readers’ employers to offer a gym stipend instead of the equivalent amount of salary. You appreciate the money more, not less, because of the story about your relationship it comes with.
Was appreciated by all. Cash as a gift can be fun if you are creative with it.
—Mitch Hedberg, 1968 - 2005
I am lucky enough to have more than enough money to maintain the life that I want to have. Giving me cash makes no material difference to me. It will most likely sit in a savings account for potentially the rest of my life. Don't do that especially if you need it (please!).
Finding an actual "physical" gift can be hard, time consuming, stressful, would prompt you to spend more than you afford to "ensure a proper gift", etc.
Gift cards for something I don't usually do is a relatively easy way to solve that. It's like saying "I know you can afford it, but you don't seem to XYZ that often, and maybe you'll like it". XYZ can be [discover a store], [try an experience], [visit some place] or anything else. If I know someone put a little money on that, I will honour that and hopefully discover something new, which is the best gift ever !. And you can put the exact amount that you feel comfortable putting (and in fact the amount itself does not really matter).
But indeed, if the recipient is in any position where cash could be helpful, or if they are saving for a purpose (travel, house, child, ...). Just give cash instead.
Some people believe that cash is an impersonal gift and that you should spend more effort to find a personal gift that the recipient would enjoy. I would find it weird if a friend came to my birthday party and gave me cash, but a gift of a nice whiskey or gin, or a silly joke gift, would feel normal. (Also no gift at all would be fine!)
I've given cash as wedding gifts with the suggestion/hope that the couple spends it on something fun during their honeymoon (but of course they're free to spend it on whatever they like). Plenty of friends who I've talked to have agreed that cash is a fine wedding gift (and sometimes preferred). Most people set up gift registries for weddings, so it's not like the non-monetary gifts from the registry are a big surprise that required a lot of thought and personal attention on the giver's part.
> Anyone who tries to put me down for doing so will simply not be receiving a gift from me next year
Hell, anyone who complains in any way about a gift they've received should fall off the gift-giving list, regardless of what the gift was. Even if someone gives you a gift you don't like or won't use, the gracious thing is to accept it and give thanks. It really is the thought that counts. If you can re-purpose or re-gift it to someone who would actually appreciate it, and do it in a way that won't end up offending the gift-giver, all the better.
I've heard the argument that you should tell the gift giver, because you don't want them to waste their money on something you don't like, but I'm not really persuaded by that. Maybe in some situations, but probably not most. Again, depends on the relationship between the people involved.
When I was twelve, my (much richer) friend came to my birthday party; but he didn't know it was my birthday. It was very impressive that on learing the facts, he immediately whipped out his wallet and gave me a tenner (I had never owned a tenner, and I didn't own a wallet).
Edit: In fact, in India it is common for folks to keep track of how much who gave, so that that a similar/slightly larger amount can be returned when the time comes.
Edit2: Another cultural tidbit, in India generally you give an odd number ending in 1. Common gifts are 11, 21, 51, 101, 501, 1001 ...
I'm not sure why cash is taboo in US - I suspect it's derived from corporations trying to drive customers to purchase items, even gift cards. After all, $1 saved is $1 not spent and that's bad for profits /s.
It shows you put some thought into the gift, while leaving them free to spend the money where and however they want. And carefully unfolding it all is a bit of payback for the creative wrapping some siblings like to do :)
I see commenters here on HN talking about how 'thoughtful' a gift card is... no, a gift card is selfishly deciding how someone else should spend money that was supposed to be a gift.
I’ve never actually heard of anyone getting burned by this in modern times though. For sufficiently valuable gift cards (e.g. Amazon), the same hazard exists.
Maybe it is in the US. Here in Russia it's kinda common to gift cash. There are even special cards for that. Many stores do sell gift cards, but I've yet to see someone buy or redeem one.
For gamers, Steam cards are not too bad.
- If you buy a gift card that isn’t worth enough for what you actually buy, the store “wins” because you will probably make up the difference with cash and they then sell you something you either would not have bought at all, or bought somewhere else.
- If you buy a gift card that is worth more than whatever you end up buying, the store “wins” again because they have received the full value and you did not.
- If you buy a gift card and by some miracle it is exactly matching the cost of what you buy, the store “wins” yet again because (a) you were still only able to purchase items from that store, and (b) the entire time you were holding the card, it was slowly losing value because only bad things could have happened: the store might have stopped offering what you wanted, the price could have changed, or heck the store could have simply gone out of business. Meanwhile, the store was already paid by you for the card (in yesterday’s dollars) so they could do almost anything with that CASH, including putting it in a saving account, and end up better off than you.
Simply put, it is never, ever, ever to your advantage to have a gift card. Ever!! Cash is better in every possible way.
I got Visa cash gift cards from my employer as small bonuses. The terms sucked - don't use it and you get hit with a fee, it had an expiration date that cost money to "renew", etc.
Amazon's gift card policy is great. The money just sits in your account, doesn't expire, can be used for anything (except other Amazon gift cards) and there is no fee to reload it with a credit card AND you can reload with an exact amount.
So as soon as I got a crappy visa gift card, I'd just transfer 100% of the money to Amazon and spend it down over the next year. It was a perfect solution.
Escheatment laws in most US states ensure gift card issuers can't just keep unredeemed balances for themselves. Unclaimed balances are remitted to the states.
> Most retailers do not have sufficient gift card liabilities and do not have sufficiently sophisticated treasury teams to make a meaningful amount of income off an investment portfolio.
This assumes that the retailer is the one holding the cash and not the issuer of the card. I'm by no means an expert in the industry but IIRC there's a whole lot more that goes into this than the author implies.
> Also, they have a much better option. Unlike insurers, who must maintain reserves by regulation, most businesses issuing closed loop gift cards are not required to maintain reserves. They can simply use the cash as a source of working capital for the business, similar to other sources of working capital, except substantially free. Even in a capital-drenched economy, it is tough to beat free.
Agreed, except it would be much better for it to be either me or my recipient who benefits from said "free money".
I also end up "buying" the gift cards from my wife and son since I'm the only one with the patience to deal with them, so at least we get most of the value off of them rather than letting them expire. It's now 12 days until Xmas and I finally spent us down to only $11 left from last year's cards.
For example, next time you take the family to a restaurant. "Could you put $50 on this card please, and the rest on this one."
Better for whom?
The article doesn't actually explain the job being done by gift cards. The job is the one the giver is expected to perform: the ritual of gift giving. The gift card is hired by the giver for that job. But how did the giver get this job?
Far more interesting than the mechanics of gift card management would be an exploration of this ritual. Where does it come from, and why has it morphed into the economically-essential activity that the former religious holiday of Christmas has become? Are gift cards the last stop before the holiday returns to its roots, or will the next phase become even less recognizable?
Then again, I think toys should be removed from their store packaging before being wrapped, but I always lose that struggle, too. People seem really stuck on only giving visibly-new things. I suspect there's some Fussellian class-analysis to be done on that behavior.
/s
So does a quick note written inside a card with some cash in it.
A gift card is only better than cash when the giver can't or doesn't want to take the time to personalize a gift.
(Source: a relative who used to give me gift cards.)
Also, do you mean the religious holiday that the church moved to the winter solstice because they couldn't get people to stop celebrating the solstice? Also, in the bible story of Christ, gift giving is the primary plot. A gift from God to save the sinners. You also have the Magi who travel far to bring gifts for Jesus. Gift giving is different than all-consuming commercialism and that has a bigger cause in our advertising controlled economy.
Growing up in England, my aunt occasionally managed this with cash.
She would give me Scottish banknotes at Christmas, which look different, but can be spent without much difficulty almost anywhere in Britain.
(The aunt lives in England, so acquiring the Scottish banknotes probably took some effort.)
Right, which can make it function a "real" gift because one type of gift is the thing that the recipient wouldn't splurge on for themselves.
Maybe they'd enjoy a meal at a fancy restaurant but they're also frugal and wouldn't actually go. A gift card to the fancy restaurant means they'll probably go there and treat themselves courtesy of you.
Isn't that partly tax benefit and partly the hope that steering employees to better health, results in better employees? E.g., for 20usd I can give them 16usd cash after taxes (or whatever) or 20usd worth of gym membership AND I'd rather my employee exercise than spend money on candy.
> A Barnes and Noble gift card to a favorite niece tells that niece that you remember she is a reader, unlike those uncreative family members who would just give her cash.
My first thought was, as others have mentioned too, "buy a card and give cash", but the thoughtful card costs money, so the recipient pays through poor convenience for the cost of the paper card, instead of the giver spending money on the thoughtful presentation.
> You can exclude the value of an employee's use of an on-premises gym or other athletic facility you operate from an employee's wages if substantially all use of the facility during the calendar year is by your employees, their spouses, and their dependent children. For this purpose, an employee's dependent child is a child or stepchild who is the employee's dependent or who, if both parents are deceased, hasn't attained the age of 25. The exclusion doesn't apply to any athletic facility if access to the facility is made available to the general public through the sale of memberships, the rental of the facility, or a similar arrangement.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2021_publink1000...
That’s a novel use of laconic to me. Maybe he meant lyrical?
1) transactions are instant and free, ie giving over physical ownership of a pub/private key pair (this could be done via scan of a QR code)
2) no prior onboarding necessary (avoids the repeated question “do you have this wallet/app?”)
Before, if I didn’t have cash, to tip a valet I’d have to ask them “do you have Zelle or Venmo?”, then I’d get their details, then send them money. Here, I could just pull out my wallet, create a new wallet with the specific amount, show them the QR code and say “scan this and it’s yours”.
Basically bitcoin gift cards without the store-specific lock-in.
I am proposing that no transaction would occur. Just like when you hand cash to someone, no external transfer needs to take place. You would essentially be giving them full access to said wallet, and giving up ownership. No transaction would need to be recorded to the blockchain because no actual wallet transfer would take place. Only the immediate physical ownership of the keys which could happen offline, instantly, etc.
The rest of your questions are not answered so easily, and agreed, this still doesn’t answer the issue of onboarding to crypto in general. What it does solve though is the necessary onboarding to creating a wallet and understanding how to receive bitcoin. No one needs to “understand” how to receive cash. You stick your hand out and receive it. Should be just as easy as that with bitcoin.
With cash, you can leave a tip in a tip jar, with no “end destination wallet” if you will.
This would aim to solve that issue. The key pair would be contained in whatever the handoff mechanism is (QR code?) so that only a one-way information transfer needs to occur, ie giving someone the QR code or handing them a gift card representation of it. The funds would be locked up in this handoff state until that person were to transfer the funds off or claim ownership another way.
As for the fees, I covered this in my other comment, but basically there would be no on-chain transaction. The funds would never switch wallets.
When you create the wallet, and put money in it however, there have to be fees right? I understand transferring the wallet is not going to cost anything because you are just sharing a private key, but you still have to fill the wallet. And now the recipient also has to move the money out of the wallet on the blockchain to use it, paying transaction fees. (Worse, they have to do so before you do, since you made the wallet you still have the private key! This needs another centralized service to prevent you from spending money you tipped)
I think the crypto angle is a red herring, what is really important to your idea is the QR-code flow that doesn't require the recipient to have done any setup. That's a good idea.
You still have to ask them if they have Venmo, ask them for their QR code, scan it, create the transaction, and then send it, and then make sure you sent it to the right person.
The loading wallet/unloading wallet concern is definitely warranted. I’d imagine that this would have to become a new special type of wallet, that the private keys are never accessible to the end-user. You could verify funds in the wallet per the blockchain as normal etc but the administrative account permissions would have to be abstracted to a more centralized system of control unfortunately.
If you spent the funds directly from these temp/“cash” wallets, you wouldn’t need to pay fees on the way out either, right. Furthermore, if you could pay directly with these types of cash wallets, businesses could just utilize the direct transfer themselves and never cash them out when customers use them to purchase from them.
It's a UX problem in the payments space, which is not really a problem crypto helps with is my point. Definitely see the problem, just don't see the crypto angle.
We are currently still trusting places like Coinbase as much as we would need to already, to implement this sort of system. Why? Because you’re right - it’s a current UX problem of payments, not something crypto inherently solves.
You could easily have retained access yourself, so after you walk away you can yank the funds out of it.
Or you could hand out access to the same wallet to a half dozen people.
Without actually transferring the funds to a wallet you know you exclusively control, you have no way to know that you've actually received anything of value.
Double spending is a symptom of a broken system. Let us at least figure out the system first so we can determine if it is broken.
Of course double spending is a concern that will need to be navigated in a system like this. Check out some of other discussions in this thread about where that leads - a centralized authoritative body responsible for issuing and “transferring” these wallets.
If you give the same QR code to two people in the same taxi, literally nothing in the system can ever distinguish between them.
Phone numbers are a bit scary though, prone to SIM takeover hacks and other insecurities. And you still have to ask for/have their phone number. I’d prefer to manage the hand-off part of it myself through my medium of choice.
It's ironic that Amex is used as an example given that they are a closed-loop network.
Patio11 is correct in that from a gift card usage perspective, Amex is open loop. But I'm just pointing out that from a network perspective, they are not.
We also sorta ran like shit, which makes sense when you consider those incentives.
I see gift cards to be somewhere between a thoughtful physical gift and a bank transfer.
I'd rather give my nephew a $50 gift card to a bookstore than $40 in cash.
Why not just write a note and give that alongside some cash?
The only time I buy gift cards is if I can get some sort of a discount. There's no other reason for me to buy them.
The two main types of open-loop cards in this industry are prepaid gift cards and reloadable prepaid debit cards. You probably see the gift cards all the time if you live in the US, they are often on an endcap near the front of grocery stores and pharmacies. Once the funds have been fully debited from the gift card account the card can't be used again, and these also expire after a few years if they aren't redeemed. Reloadable debit cards are basically a simplified bank account often used by the underbanked or for people who may not want to use a debit card tied to their bank or a credit card for whatever reason.
For the most part folks can use these products to make any purchase that one could make with a normal debit or credit card, but there are some exceptions to that. I think most of the streaming services don't accept them, and probably many other subscription based services that use periodic charges to an account.