Gift card rules: three-year expiry, banned fees and what you must disclose

What the gift card rules require

Gift cards supplied on or after 1 November 2019 must be redeemable for at least three years, must prominently display the expiry date, and must not carry fees the recipient has to pay after purchase.

The rules sit in the Australian Consumer Law at sections 99A to 99G, supported by regulations 89A to 89C, with the penalty provisions at sections 191A to 191C. They apply to a gift card or gift voucher preloaded with an amount of money redeemable for goods or services to the value shown on the card, in physical or electronic form.

The three requirements are cumulative. A card with a five-year expiry that carries a monthly inactivity fee breaches the rules just as clearly as a twelve-month card does. Nothing in the regime obliges a business to issue gift cards at all — but if you do, you take on all three duties together.

Which cards are caught and which are excluded

A narrow group of cards falls outside the gift card requirements entirely, and a wider group falls outside only the three-year validity rule.

Outside the gift card requirements altogether:

• cards that can be reloaded or topped up
• second-hand gift cards
• cards supplied to certain charities or government agencies

Outside the three-year validity requirement, but still subject to the other rules:

• cards donated for promotional purposes
• cards available only for a specified period, such as a festival or a limited theatre season
• cards supplied at a genuine discount — a $40 voucher for a class normally priced at $80
• cards forming part of an employee reward scheme
• cards forming part of a customer loyalty programme
• cards forming part of a temporary marketing promotion

The ACCC's business guidance sets out the exclusions in those terms (ACCC, checked August 2026). The exclusions are drafted narrowly and are applied on substance, not labels. A card is not "supplied at a genuine discount" because you describe it that way; there must be a genuine discount against the ordinary price. A card is not part of a loyalty programme because you mention your loyalty programme on the packaging.

Loyalty programme currency raises its own set of questions about terms, data and unilateral variation. Our explainer on loyalty programmes, data and the ACL covers those, as does the loyalty programme obligation record.

The three-year minimum validity period

Gift cards purchased on or after 1 November 2019 must be redeemable for at least three years from the date of purchase or supply.

Three practical consequences follow.

The clock starts at supply, not activation. If your system activates a card at a later date, the three-year period is still measured from purchase. Where a card requires activation, the ACCC's guidance is that any activation expiry date should itself be clearly stated on the card.

Longer periods are permitted. Nothing stops you offering five years, or no expiry at all. If there is no expiry date, that must be stated on the card, using wording such as "No expiry date".

Breakage assumptions need revisiting. Businesses that built revenue recognition assumptions around twelve-month or two-year expiries need to reset both their accounting and their terms. Unredeemed balances may also engage state and territory unclaimed money regimes; check those separately.

The ban on post-supply fees and its four exceptions

Gift cards purchased after 1 November 2019 must not include any fee or charge the recipient has to pay after the card has been purchased.

That is the general rule: no activation fees charged to the recipient, no monthly account-keeping fees, no inactivity or dormancy fees, no balance-enquiry fees, no fee for redeeming the card. Nor can your terms and conditions reserve a right to impose such a fee later.

The ACCC identifies four categories that fall outside the ban:

The booking fee exception is the one most often over-read. It permits parity, not premium: if a customer paying by card pays a $2 booking fee, a customer redeeming a gift card can be charged the same $2 booking fee, but not $5 because they are using a gift card.

The payment surcharge exception is also about to narrow in practical terms. From 1 October 2026 the designated card networks are introducing no-surcharge rules, which removes the most common source of surcharges at the point of sale. Our explainer on card surcharging and the 2026 reform sets out what changes and when.

Disclosure: expiry dates, conditions and restrictions

The expiry date must be prominently displayed on the card, and the wider ACL requires the other material terms to be disclosed too.

The ACCC accepts two ways of presenting the expiry:

• A full date — a date at least three years from the date of purchase, printed on the card.
• A period plus the issue date — for example, "Gift card expires 5 years from the issue date. Date of issue: January 2021".

Where there is no expiry, say so on the card.

Beyond the statutory expiry disclosure, the general prohibitions on misleading conduct and false representations mean gift cards should clearly state the conditions and restrictions on use. The ACCC's guidance points to the activation expiry date for cards requiring activation, any limit on the number of transactions, and whether the card can be reloaded or topped up. Restrictions that a purchaser would not expect — single-store redemption for a card carrying a group brand, exclusion of sale items, or a minimum spend — belong on the card and in the point-of-sale disclosure, not buried in a web page.

Where gift cards meet the rest of the ACL

Compliance with sections 99A to 99G does not immunise a gift card programme from the rest of the Australian Consumer Law.

• Consumer guarantees. Goods and services bought with a gift card carry the same statutory guarantees as goods bought with cash. A "no refunds on gift card purchases" sign is unenforceable to the extent it purports to exclude those rights. See the consumer guarantees explained and the consumer guarantees obligation record.
• Unfair contract terms. Gift card terms are standard form consumer contract terms. A term allowing you to cancel a card, vary its value or change redemption conditions unilaterally is a candidate unfair term. Our unfair contract terms explainer and the unfair contract terms checker cover the test and the penalty regime.
• Misleading conduct. Promotional claims about gift cards — "valid anywhere", "never expires", "worth $100" — are representations like any other and must be accurate.

Penalties and a compliance checklist

Breach of the gift card rules carries a maximum civil and criminal penalty of $30,000 for a body corporate and $6,000 for an individual, with infringement notices set at lower amounts.

Where the ACCC has reasonable grounds to believe a gift card provision has been breached, it can issue an infringement notice of $20,020 (55 penalty units) for corporations or $4,004 (11 penalty units) for individuals, based on the penalty unit value of $364 applying from 1 July 2026 (ACCC fines and penalties, checked August 2026). Those are per-breach amounts, and a non-compliant card design is a breach repeated across every card issued. Use the penalty estimator to size the aggregate exposure.

A short checklist before your next print run:

1. Confirm your card is not within an exclusion — and if you are relying on one, document why.
2. Set validity to at least three years from supply, measured from purchase rather than activation.
3. Print the expiry as a full date, or as a period plus the issue date; print "No expiry date" if there is none.
4. Strip every post-supply fee from the product and from the terms, keeping only the four permitted categories.
5. Check booking fee parity against your other payment methods.
6. Put the material conditions and restrictions on the card, not only on a web page.
7. Review the terms against the unfair contract terms regime, particularly any unilateral variation or cancellation right.
8. Reset any breakage assumptions built on shorter expiry periods.

This article is a reference summary, not legal advice. Confirm current requirements with the ACCC or a qualified adviser before changing your gift card programme.