# Money from Gift Certificates

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/money-from-gift-certificates/39295>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 1, 2000, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/money-from-gift-certificates/39295 "2000-11-01T21:27:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2000, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/money-from-gift-certificates/39295/1 "2000-11-01T21:27:38Z")

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What happens to the money from gift certificates if they are not redeemed? Does the business just keep the money? It seems as if this might create some strange accounting problems with multi-store chains and such.

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2000, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/money-from-gift-certificates/39295/2 "2000-11-01T21:32:16Z")

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They keep the money. I don’t know how the accounting works out; my WAG is that gift certificates are just sold as products.