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And having been involved on the issuer side of a few of these (only tangentially), while I understand the financial greed that goes into the rules, I was also glad for the procedural benefit that they created. It meant that the program had a built in end date.
If a gift card can never expire, then a store that issues one is obligated to maintain the systems and databases necessary to redeem them in perpetuity. At least with expiring cards you know that XX months/years/etc. after cessation you can just forget about them. Because it really sucks when developing something new to be told "oh, we can't use that technology because those gift cards we issued for a year back in 1997 won't work with it."
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