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Comment by analogpixel | Hacker News Reader

> The American Association of Retired People (AARP, an advocacy non-profit for older adults) has paid for ads on podcasts I listen to. The ad made a claim which felt raspberry-worthy (in service of an important public service announcement), which they repeat in writing: Asking to be paid by gift card is always a scam.

>Of course it isn’t. Gift cards are a payments rail, and an enormous business independently of being a payments rail. Hundreds of firms will indeed ask you to pay them on gift cards!

That’s where I stopped reading. The author seems more interested in being contrarian for clicks than in giving practical advice. AARP is right here: being asked to pay by gift card is a major red flag, and unless you know the company personally, it’s time to walk away.

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Patrick very carefully declined to give examples of such legitimate yet debanked businesses. Presumably because they're all grey market stuff that sets off a whole other "wait, is that legal?" conversation.

I have never seen a legitimate business asking for payment in gift cards. I've encountered the traditional tradesmen offering discounts for cash, though.

Edit: I think he may actually be talking about businesses accepting payments in their own gift cards, which is so obvious that it's easy to forget. It's not a scam when Apple ask you to pay in Apple gift cards. It's just the only non scam such case.

Apple don't ask you to pay in Apple gift cards. They give you the option, but they are perfectly happy with a credit card.

If “Apple” asks you to pay with Apple gift cards, they’re not Apple, and it is most definitely a scam.

I don’t think he is talking about businesses that accept payment in other gift cards… he has a footnote explaining the type of business he is talking about.

I've used 3rd party retail gift cards to pay for consumer VPN service, which is only "grey market" because privacy is often criminalized. But I still 100% agree with what the AARP is saying. This is one of those things that sure, there is technically an exception, but by the time you get to the level of knowing enough to know when that exception applies, you end up agreeing with the common advice.

Me: "Don't do this."

Them: "But you did it right there."

Me: "And when you know enough about the subject to know why that's a valid exception to the rule, you'll be savvy enough to break the rule. Until then, don't." Chesterton's fence and all.

I’m the kind of nerd who enjoys the surprising nitty gritty details, so I enjoyed the rest of the article and I’d recommend people read it.

But I agree with you: the AARP is 100% right to be running PSAs like this. I’d be curious to hear more about how a shadow economy like this would/would not help unbanked people, which he implies but did not describe at all. But it certainly doesn’t change the point that gift cards are an effective vehicle for fraud, and anytime someone asks to pay you (or especially you to pay them) in gift cards… your scam senses should tingle.

Agreed. It's more practical to tell seniors that all gift card requests are scams rather than teaching them to identify warning signs, since legitimate gift card payments are so rare.

The world is full of people who, like you, seek any reason to not listen or read interesting things in favour of doing just about anything else. You don’t win a prize for being part of that group — at best, you saved as much time as it took you to write that comment. In exchange you are likely poorer for it intellectually because Patrick’s writing has an exceptionally high signal to noise ratio, and that signal is one most are not privy to.

At no point did the article claim AARP was in the wrong for running those ads. But had you kept reading you’d maybe have understood that wasn’t the point nor the premise in the first place.

I'm ok with you being superior to me in every way possible; I think I can live with that.

In case it wasn't clear: I don't care what you do, I care that other people don't miss out on a good article because you flaunt your anti-intellectualism on HN.

The author is an expert in the field of payments. What you call "being contrarian" is better called "speaking the truth".

Is he an expert in the field of old people being scammed out of lots of money? Telling non tech-savvy people that it's ok to listen to the nice man on the phone and send him a lot of gift cards?

Who do you think the article's readers are? Random people? No, it's explicitly for people who are interested in both tech and finance.

I am also an expert in the field of payments. The only thing that makes gift cards stand out from other transaction media is there are many fewer guardrails around them money movement wise.

I'd pretty much back up AARP on this one. Asking for payment by gift card should in the majority of cases put one on guard.

The article wasn’t about the AARP. That was just the hook. The article is about what you just said: there are many fewer guardrails, and why.

I would call it "splitting hairs," which experts tend to do.

The practical reality is acknowledged at the end of the post.

Even if, technically speaking, using gift cards as a payments instrument is not a scam 100% of the time, anyone but a non-expert should behave as if it's 100%.

Author works in payments industry which issues and accepts gift cards, benefits from the lack of consumer protections, and incidentally doesn’t make any revenue on cash payments.

Yes the whole essay was premised on this dumb little sleight of hand. It’s disingenuous.

AARP isn’t telling fibs. It’s giving sound advice.

The only legit use of a gift card is when you’re redeeming that gift card directly with the issuer. No business is going to request or require that you do that.

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