Only one US state requires tamper-evident gift card packaging as of 2025

Despite $217 million in reported gift card fraud losses in 2023 alone and decades of known physical tampering techniques, Maryland is the only US state that has enacted a law requiring tamper-evident packaging for gift cards, and it does not fully take effect until October 2025. The remaining 49 states have no packaging security requirements whatsoever. A retailer in California, Texas, or New York can legally sell gift cards in flimsy cardboard sleeves with scratch-off PINs that a scammer can read, memorize, and re-cover in under 30 seconds. New York's SB 9900 (Gift Certificate Scam Prevention Act) is in committee but has not passed. The packaging problem is solvable with existing technology -- sealed blister packs, activation-locked PINs that are only generated at point of sale, or digital-only gift cards -- but the cost of upgrading physical packaging across millions of retail locations falls on the gift card distributors (InComm, Blackhawk Network) who have lobbied against mandates. ProPublica's investigation found that InComm specifically resisted packaging upgrades for years despite internal knowledge of the draining problem. The state-by-state legislative approach means that even as Maryland implements its law, organized crime groups can simply shift their physical tampering operations to neighboring Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Delaware.