{"id":10691,"date":"2024-11-19T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10691"},"modified":"2024-11-19T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T18:03:00","slug":"kroger-gift-card-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/19\/kroger-gift-card-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Kroger Gift Card Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wisn.com\/article\/chicago-man-charged-for-gift-card-scam-at-two-ozaukee-county-walgreens-grafton-cedarburg\/62856892\">Gift card fraud<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wlky.com\/article\/men-arrested-gift-card-scam-louisville-millions-lost\/62673181\">has been<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gmtoday.com\/news_graphic\/news\/man-charged-in-gift-card-scam\/article_b48f77d5-37e0-59de-9ec7-03fd854d6144.html\">running rampant<\/a> at US grocery stores this year. Kroger, BlackHawk, and Pathward have been making changes to make fraud harder recently, and that&#8217;s especially escalated in the last several weeks. Updates for gift card buyers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The newest batches of BestBuy and Apple gift cards are now geo-locked to the store they were shipped to (they won&#8217;t activate at other stores, and this locking applies to different stores in the same chain in the same city)<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Older stock bulk gift card brands like HomeDepot, BestBuy, and Apple are slowly being removed from Kroger&#8217;s POS terminal software so they can&#8217;t be activated<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Visa gift cards are going away at some stores, replaced by higher fee Mastercards with better tamper proofing<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New gift card packaging now includes the phrase &#8220;This package is the property of BHN until purchased&#8221;<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kroger has installed new one-way gift card hangers in some stores that only allow removing cards from the hanger, but don&#8217;t allow putting them back<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I think it&#8217;s safe to assume that geo-locking and better gift card inventory management will spread to other gift card brands quickly, and it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay safe out there!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"729\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/tempImageluiqmp-729x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10694\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/tempImageluiqmp-729x1024.jpg 729w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/tempImageluiqmp-214x300.jpg 214w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/tempImageluiqmp-768x1078.jpg 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/tempImageluiqmp.jpg 832w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 729px) 100vw, 729px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">The scammers almost got me with this one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift-cards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10691"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10705,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions\/10705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}