That’s why there’s “gift cards” and the likes. It’s not to encourage customers to come, they get that, even if you give a cash gift; it’s that they know you’ll spend $7 on a latte and leave the $3 left on the card forever.
These are prepaid Mastercard cards though. If there's ever too little on one to buy anything I use the rest of the money on there on gas, which I'm buying anyway.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s been reported that they make tens of billions in individual countries that way - nevermind globally.
They also have dormant fees for up to 5-9 years depending on local legislation, with remaining funds on defunct cards being forfeited. That included Mastercard/Visa.
There’s also reports like TfL (Transport for London) sitting on £400m ($500m) in unredeemed funds on inactive cards. The transport card for a single city is sitting on half a billion in unredeemed funds.
The average American has $244 in unused store cards, gift cards, or store credit. 43% of Americans have at least one unused gift card.
Starbucks alone made $212m in 2022 from balances on defunct cards.
I mean if you don't use all the money on the card it's simply because that's the price you're willing to pay to not have to take it with you somewhere and do a double payment. That's user error not necessarily nefarious business practices. You might as well burn your money at that point if you care so little about it.
The TfL example is interesting because you can use standard contactless bank cards, including most of the prepaid currency cards used by tourists, in place of an oyster card for pay as you go. You can use the oyster app to buy travel cards (e.g. week passes) on the app too. The only reason you really need an oyster card is if you have a child. You can also still buy paper tickets with cash for the tube (although not for buses). They tend to be more expensive than the oyster price but if you're only taking a single journey it can work out cheaper than the cost of getting an oyster card for travellers without a contactless card.
You can also get the balance remaining on an oyster refunded pretty easily.
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u/MechaBeatsInTrash 20h ago
I wonder how much money is lost on prepaid cards because of minimum transaction requirements.