Gift cards: the most underrated gift of the season. And every season, honestly.

As we approach the season of giving, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers across the world hurry to empty their bank accounts in search of the perfect gift. From gua shas to Uggs, to concert tickets, to video games, books and more—they search high and low to find the one thing that’ll make their loved one’s eyes light up with joy.

Little do they know, the best gift lies right under their noses, often overlooked and criticized—a pocket-sized portal into an endless realm of possibility: gift cards.

For too long, gift cards have borne the title of the “laziest” gift. The gift given at company retreats, trivia nights and to the friend of a friend whose birthday dinner you somehow got invited to. The band-aid of gifts, if you will—one size fits all. They’re mocked for lacking personality and effort, as if the average person’s gifting strategy is anything more sophisticated than “I hope this is their vibe.”

To that I say, how would we live without it? Nearly every store and company sells gift cards. Airlines, car companies, clothing stores, grocery stores and more all recognize how valuable gift cards are as products and presents. There’s a reason every checkout aisle, website and customer service kiosk has a designated selection of them. 

Gift cards can do it all. They’re rechargeable, shelf-stable, timeless and can save your pockets when you least expect it. They sit in your wallet until the day you find yourself stranded at the mall and starving, when you suddenly remember that $25 Visa gift card you won in a raffle two years ago. Your plastic saviour.

Like Atlas, the gift card carries the weight of the world. I shudder to think of what we’d do without it.

So why do they get so much flak? Why are they seen as a bottom-of-the-barrel present you’d get your least favourite coworker? People treat them like the participation trophy of gift giving when in reality they’re the only gift that acknowledges a simple and universal truth: human nature demands freedom of choice. 

Maybe it’s a personal opinion, but I think we need to get off the gift card’s hypothetical neck. It’s time we stop pretending we don’t love flexibility. At the end of the day, not all gifts are made equal. They aren’t all going to be sentimental representations of how our loved ones perceive us. 

There is a storm cloud of shame surrounding functional gifts. We’ve bought into a cultural myth that gifts have to reflect deep emotional thought in order to be worth anything. Birthday presents and Christmas gifts have become a performance, brought on by the expectation that a proper gift requires emotional labour. The more specific, obscure or impractical, the more heartfelt it supposedly is. A candle in the scent “summer rain”? Thoughtful. A gift card? Apparently, unforgivable. 

People would rather empty their wallets on useless junk the receiver will never, ever use—that costs the same amount as a gift card—because they’re convinced that gift cards are the emotional equivalent of a pipe bomb. 

The fact of the matter is that gift cards make people uncomfortable. They shatter the illusion that you spent hours scouring store shelves and agonizing over options. Instead of theatrics, they give you the truth: people enjoy receiving things they want. They don’t offer a compelling and heartwarming backstory. You can’t say “This gift card reminded me of your love of dinosaurs,” unless it happens to be from the Jurassic Park store, which does not exist.  

We avoid gift cards like the plague, terrified of giving “impersonal” gifts, but nothing feels more impersonal than receiving something that shows the giver doesn’t know you at all. 

A lavender-scented bath set, when your apartment doesn’t have a tub? A crafting kit when I’ve openly declared that I don’t craft, have never crafted and I won’t be starting now? That’s not personal; that’s evidence that you don’t know me as well as you pretend to. You saw an item, vaguely thought “People like these,” assumed I was interchangeable with the rest of the faceless masses, and then expected my gratitude for it. 

Forgo the shame! Why are we so embarrassed to admit we weren’t sure what someone might want? Since when did uncertainty become a moral failing? There’s nothing noble about confidently buying someone the wrong gift. 

I would go as far as to argue that the “impersonal” gift card is far more personal than half the physical gifts people scramble to buy. 

There’s a gift card for every type of person. Every interest—popular or niche—is covered. There are gift cards for sock stores, knife stores, massage places, coffee shops, gardening centres, subscription boxes and online marketplaces full of things you’d never think to buy, but they’d love to buy themselves.

If you know someone loves coffee and you get them a gift card for Second Cup, that’s personal. If they love gaming but can’t bring themselves to buy the game in their Steam wishlist, a gift card is remarkably thoughtful. If they love not spending their own money, every gift card is the perfect present. 

In terms of practicality, gift cards have all keychains, bath bombs and remarkably unflattering items of clothing beat. It’s 2025. We’re in one of the worst financial climates of our lifetime, no one is getting hired post-grad and we’re all saddled with the weight of tuition fees and loans. The last thing we need is more clutter disguised as kindness while our pockets remain empty.

Gift cards are a celebration of financial wellness. It’s money that bypasses your sense of fiscal responsibility—like girl math on crack. Someone gives you a Visa gift card, and suddenly that overpriced hoodie you saw online is entirely justified. Someone gives you a Sephora gift card, and now buying that $80 face wash “just to try it” becomes a perfectly reasonable decision. 

Giving people gift cards saves us from wasting our money on a gift that will be disdainfully donated or sit collecting dust on a high shelf for the rest of eternity and allow the receiver to be convenienced on their own terms. 

They are the backbone of the modern gift-giving ecosystem. They might not be glamorous, but neither is indoor plumbing, and you never see people complaining about that. 

Maybe we, as a society, need to release ourselves from the shackles of dramatic gift-giving and acknowledge that not everything needs to be life-changing. At the end of the day, maybe not every gift needs to have a backstory. Some gifts can just be pleasant and useful, rather than a symbolic representation of your relationship. 

Free yourself and your loved ones from the gift-giving matrix. Be open and honest with each other. Maybe that would be the biggest gift of them all.