Gift card expiration laws by state (2026-2027) and how to set expiry in Shopify

If you sell gift cards to US customers, gift card expiration laws by state decide whether you can put an expiry date on them at all. There is a federal floor of five years, and several states go much further. Some ban expiry outright, some require seven or nine years, and a few force you to pay out small balances in cash.

This guide collects the rules in force going into 2027, explains what happens to balances nobody spends, covers the UK and EU briefly, and shows how expiry works in Shopify.

The federal floor: five years

The federal rules are in Regulation E, section 1005.20. For a store gift card sold to a consumer:

• Five-year minimum. The funds can't expire before the later of five years after the card was issued or five years after money was last loaded onto it.
• Disclosure on the card. The expiry date of the funds, or the fact that they don't expire, has to appear on the card itself.
• Dormancy fees are limited. A dormancy, inactivity or service fee is only allowed after a full year with no activity, at most once a month, and only if the fee is disclosed on the card.
• Some cards are excluded. Loyalty, award and promotional cards, reloadable cards not sold as gift cards, cards not marketed to the general public and paper-only certificates fall outside these rules.

These rules come from the Credit CARD Act of 2009. The Federal Reserve's final rules took effect on 22 August 2010, so that is when the five-year floor started. Federal law sets the minimum. Where a state is stricter, you follow the state.

Gift card laws by state: where expiry is banned or limited

Among the states we checked, California, Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota, Montana and Washington ban expiry on most cards sold to consumers. Massachusetts and New York allow it only after seven and nine years.

These are the states we verified against the statute itself. Other states have gift card laws too, so check every state where you have customers before you switch expiry on.

A Shopify store usually sells to all of these states at once, and Shopify has no per-state expiry setting, so in practice the strictest rule becomes your rule.

Do gift cards expire in Massachusetts?

They can, but only after seven years. The law says a gift certificate "shall be valid for not less than 7 years after its date of issuance" (c. 200A, s. 5D). Three details matter for an online store:

• Show the dates. The issue date and expiry date must be on the card. For an electronic card, the receipt, a website or a toll-free phone line also counts. If the expiry date isn't available in one of those ways, the card is "redeemable in perpetuity".
• Cash for the last part. On a card that can't be reloaded, a customer who has used at least 90% of its face value can take the rest in cash. On a reloadable card, the same choice applies once $5 or less is left.
• A fine for short expiry. Selling a gift certificate with less than seven years to redeem it can bring a fine of up to $300 (c. 266, s. 75C).

Wisconsin gift card expiration law: the federal five years

Wisconsin has no gift card expiry law of its own. The state's consumer protection agency puts it this way: "Although Wisconsin does not specifically regulate the sale of gift cards, the federal government does" (DATCP). For customers in Wisconsin, the federal floor applies, which means at least five years from purchase or from the last time money was added, with the expiry date shown on the card.

California's $15 cash-out since 1 April 2026

California's SB 22 raised the cash-out threshold in Civil Code 1749.5 from $10 to $15, operative from 1 April 2026, and made clear that electronic gift cards are covered. A customer with less than $15 left on a card can ask for the rest in cash, and "cash" can include an electronic transfer if you both agree. Our news piece on the California gift card cash-out law explains how to handle those requests from an online store.

Promotional cards: the exemption with conditions

Almost every law above exempts cards you give away, such as a $10 card for signing up or a loyalty reward. These can usually carry an expiry date, with conditions:

• The customer must not have paid for the card itself. Cards sold below face value are a separate case. Minnesota and New York exempt some of them, such as discounted or volume sales to nonprofits for fundraising.
• The expiry has to be disclosed. California requires the expiry date on the front of the card in capital letters of at least 10-point type, and Washington requires it "clearly and legibly".
• Federal rules still require some disclosures on promotional cards, even though they are excluded from the five-year minimum.

Gift card escheatment laws by state: what unclaimed property means

Escheat is the process where a state takes custody of money that a business owes to someone who has stopped claiming it. The owner can later claim it back from the state.

States treat unspent gift card balances differently:

• Some exclude gift cards. Connecticut's unclaimed property law does not apply to gift certificates (section 3-73a(e)).
• Some leave the door open. New York's gift card statute says nothing in it prevents unclaimed funds from becoming abandoned property under the state's abandoned property law (GBL 396-i).
• Which state gets the balance follows a rule set by the US Supreme Court in Texas v. New Jersey (1965). The balance goes to the state of the owner's last known address in your records, and if you have no address, to the state where your company is incorporated.

Arizona: the gift card exemption that disappeared by accident

On 22 June 2026, Arizona enacted SB 1336, a bill about the State Land Department. An amendment inside it struck the exclusions in the unclaimed property definitions (A.R.S. 44-301), including gift certificates, electronic gift cards and stored value cards. With no emergency clause, it took effect on Arizona's general effective date, 12 September 2026 (Reed Smith, 16 July 2026).

On 31 July 2026, the Arizona Department of Revenue issued ruling UPR 26-001, calling the change a "drafting anomaly". It says these balances should not be reported, the department will not accept them and it will not include them in audits. The ruling is not binding, and reports say the governor's office wants a technical fix in the 2027 session, with "no guarantee" it passes (Alston & Bird, August 2026). For now Arizona isn't asking for gift card balances, but the statute says otherwise. Watch the 2027 session.

Connecticut: a study that stalled

Connecticut's SB 460 of 2026 would have asked the State Treasurer to study whether unredeemed gift certificates should escheat to the state, with a report due by 1 January 2027. It passed committee and was placed on the Senate calendar on 8 April 2026. The bill status page shows no action after that, so the exclusion described above still stands.

In our checks we did not find a state gift card expiry law taking effect on 1 January 2027, so read the table above as the rules in force going into 2027. The open questions for next year are on the unclaimed property side.

Outside the US: UK, Ireland and the EU

European Union. There is no EU-wide rule. The European Consumer Centre in Ireland puts it plainly: "There are no common rules in the EU on the minimum timeframes that vouchers must be valid for" (ECC Ireland). Each country decides.

Ireland. Since 2 December 2019, most gift vouchers must be valid for at least five years from purchase, and a shorter expiry is treated as five years. Promotional vouchers, loyalty scheme vouchers, refund vouchers and e-money vouchers are excluded (CCPC).

United Kingdom. No statute sets a minimum. Which? says "expiry dates are allowed as long as the person buying the voucher was made aware of this at the time of purchase" (Which?). Fair-terms rules still apply, so a very short expiry hidden in small print is a risk.

We could not confirm other EU countries' rules from an official source, so they are left out.

Do Shopify gift cards expire?

Not unless you tell them to. Shopify's gift card settings say cards don't expire by default "because it's illegal in some countries for gift cards to expire". There are three places where a Shopify gift card expiration date can come from:

1. The store default. Go to Settings, Payments, and in Payment configuration click Gift card expiration. Choose between no expiry and an expiration period in days, months or years. If you pick a period, the default is five years.
2. A single card. When you issue a card by hand, the Expiration date section has a Set expiration date option. On an existing card, Shopify's gift card management page lets you click Edit expiry date.
3. Apps. Cards created through the Admin API get an expiry only if the app sends one. The expiresOn field says that if it is not provided, "the gift card will never expire". Since the 2026-04 API version, apps can read your default through GiftCardConfiguration.expirationConfiguration (changelog, 6 February 2026), which returns null when cards never expire.

Point 3 catches people out. If you set a default and an app creates your cards, ask the developer whether the app applies it, or you may end up with two kinds of card.

Store credit expiry is a separate setting

Store credit has no store-wide default. Shopify says "store credit expiration is set per issuance", and credit expires "at the end of the day in your store's timezone" (Shopify help). Credit you issue for refunds or goodwill isn't a card someone paid for, but check your state's rules before dating it. We cover those rules in store credit expiration laws by state. Our guide to Shopify gift cards vs store credit covers when to use each.

The setup we recommend

For a store selling to the US, UK and EU, the low-risk setup is simple:

• Leave Gift card expiration set to no expiry. It is legal everywhere in this guide.
• If you already set a period, check existing cards for expiry dates and edit them on cards sold to customers in the strict states.
• Give free promotional cards their own product or campaign, mark them as promotional, and print the expiry clearly in the email.
• Use store credit, with an expiry if you want one, for refunds and apologies.
• Write a short policy page: no expiry, how to check the balance, and how customers in California can ask for small balances in cash.
• Ask your accountant how unspent balances are treated in your books and whether any state expects a report.

GiftmintGift cards with emails that carry your logo, delivery on the day the buyer picks and a balance check in your store.See how it works

No expiry doesn't mean balances sit there forever. Reminding customers they still have money to spend is the friendly way to clear them. We build Shopify apps, and Giftmint is ours for gift cards. It creates native Shopify gift cards, so they keep working at checkout if you uninstall, and on the Pro plan it sends up to three unused balance reminders per card, each with an unsubscribe link. It also lets you add or remove balance, with a reason and a history, on the cards it issues or imports, which the Shopify admin can't do on its own. To compare options first, our roundup of the best gift card apps for Shopify lists the alternatives and what each charges.

In the US, no expiry is the only setting that works in every state. Put dates on store credit and promotional codes if you need them, and leave gift cards that customers paid for alone.

Frequently asked questions