The gift card guide / The stores are holding billions of our dollars, interest free.
The stores are holding billions of our dollars, interest free.
Every unspent card is a loan you made to the store at 0%. Almost half of us are borrowing at 21% at the same time.
Unspent gift card money on the books, in billions, from each company's annual report via SEC EDGAR: Amazon at December 31, 2025; Starbucks cards and rewards at September 28, 2025; Target at January 31, 2026; Home Depot at February 1, 2026. Most of it will be spent in normal use.
The part that's never spent has an accounting name: breakage. Starbucks recorded $222.4 million of it in fiscal 2025.
Go deeper: the numbers
Amazon's liability for unredeemed gift cards was $5.6 billion at December 31, 2025. Starbucks' deferred revenue for stored value cards and loyalty was $1,751.7 million at September 28, 2025, and it recorded $200.4 million of breakage in company stores plus $22.0 million in licensed stores that year. Target's gift card liability was $1,197 million at January 31, 2026; its cards don't expire. Home Depot's performance obligations for unredeemed gift cards were $1.1 billion at February 1, 2026.
These are the companies' own figures, as reported. Most of this money is in normal use and will be spent. In 2019, about 3% of the value loaded onto US gift cards was never redeemed, about $3 billion (Mercator Advisory Group via CBS News, 2020). 47% of credit cardholders carry a balance from month to month (Bankrate, January 2026).
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