Gift card fraud has been running rampant at US grocery stores this year. Kroger, BlackHawk, and Pathward have been making changes to make fraud harder recently, and that’s especially escalated in the last several weeks. Updates for gift card buyers:
- The newest batches of BestBuy and Apple gift cards are now geo-locked to the store they were shipped to (they won’t activate at other stores, and this locking applies to different stores in the same chain in the same city)
- Older stock bulk gift card brands like HomeDepot, BestBuy, and Apple are slowly being removed from Kroger’s POS terminal software so they can’t be activated
- Visa gift cards are going away at some stores, replaced by higher fee Mastercards with better tamper proofing
- New gift card packaging now includes the phrase “This package is the property of BHN until purchased”
- Kroger has installed new one-way gift card hangers in some stores that only allow removing cards from the hanger, but don’t allow putting them back
I think it’s safe to assume that geo-locking and better gift card inventory management will spread to other gift card brands quickly, and it’s also safe to assume that BlackHawk Network (BHN) is actively working on language and tamper measures to improve their legal position when fraud and theft take place.
Stay safe out there!
The scammers almost got me with this one!