Gift cards: It's called "breakage" and you know why..?

From last week's New York Times, in an article about gift cards:

In the industry, this is known as breakage, and here’s what it means: If you buy a gift card for a family member or friend, there’s a good chance you’ll give a little gift to the retailer or bank that issued it as well.

But wait! There's more:

But we could put an end to all of this waste if the givers got wise to the billions in annual giveaways to retailers and banks and just handed over cash.... Nobody neglects to spend cash. The reason they came up with the word breakage is that the gift card system was more than a little bit broken.

Read the entire article here.

You know what Lottay.com sez: Gift cards are the new fruitcake!

(Image: New York Times online.)