Gift cards have quietly become one of the largest categories in retail and payments. They are the most-requested holiday gift, the default reward in loyalty and incentive programmes, and — increasingly — a digital product delivered to an inbox in seconds rather than a plastic card hung on a rack. This report pulls together the most reliable, recent figures on the global gift card industry for 2026: how big the market is, how fast digital is growing, what consumers actually do with their cards, how much value goes unredeemed every year, and the fraud problem regulators keep warning about. Every figure below is attributed, and the full source list is at the bottom so you can verify and cite it.
Key takeaways at a glance
- The global gift card market is estimated at roughly $1.42 trillion in 2026 and is forecast to keep growing at a double-digit pace in most analyst models.
- Digital gift cards are the fastest-growing segment, projected to expand at a 16%+ CAGR and to roughly triple between 2025 and 2030.
- About 43% of American adults are sitting on at least one unused gift card, worth an estimated $23 billion in total.
- Gift cards remain the #1 payment method demanded by scammers — the FTC recorded at least $212 million stolen via gift cards in 2024.
How big is the gift card market in 2026?
The global gift card market is commonly estimated at around $1.4 trillion in load value for 2026, with the United States accounting for roughly a third of that. The exact figure depends on the research house and what they include, so the table below shows several of the most-cited 2025–2026 estimates side by side rather than a single number.
| Source | Scope | Market size | Year | Growth (CAGR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital One Shopping (research roundup) | Global | $1.42 trillion | 2026 | — |
| Capital One Shopping (research roundup) | United States | $507.1 billion | 2026 | — |
| Precedence Research | Global | $1.24 trillion | 2025 | 13.1% to 2035 |
| Research and Markets (incentive cards) | Global | $614.7 billion | 2025 | 8.5% to 2029 |
| Fortune Business Insights | Global | Growing through 2034 | 2026 | ~5–9% |
Load value in USD trillions. 2030 is a projection.
Source: Capital One Shopping gift card research, 2026; Precedence Research, 2025.
The shift to digital gift cards
The clearest structural trend in the industry is the move from plastic to pixels. Digital (e-gift) cards — the kind Virtwave delivers by email — are the fastest-growing part of the market. Analysts at Research and Markets value the digital gift card segment at roughly $359 billion in 2025, rising to about $399 billion in 2026, and project it to reach around $1.25 trillion by 2030 on a 16%+ compound annual growth rate.
USD billions. 2030 is a projection at a 16.6% CAGR.
Source: Research and Markets, Digital Gift Card Market, 2026.
How consumers buy and spend on gift cards
Gift cards are a habit, not a one-off. Around 64% of consumers give at least one gift card during the holiday season, and the average values people load have crept up year on year. There is also a well-documented “overspend” effect: most recipients spend more than the value of the card when they redeem it, which is exactly why retailers love the format.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average value of a gift card given | $47.91 | Capital One Shopping |
| Average value of a self-purchased card | $51.93 | Capital One Shopping |
| Annual gift card spend — Millennials | $456 | Capital One Shopping |
| Annual gift card spend — Gen Z | $211 | Capital One Shopping |
| Share who give ≥1 card in the holidays | 64% | Capital One Shopping |
| Share who overspend the card value | 61% (by ~$108 avg) | Capital One Shopping |
Unused gift cards and “breakage”
The flip side of the gift card boom is the value that never gets spent. Survey data from Bankrate finds that 43% of US adults have at least one unused gift card, voucher or store credit — collectively worth an estimated $23 billion. In the industry this unredeemed value is called “breakage”, and it tends to skew toward higher earners, who are more likely to forget a card than someone on a tighter budget.
Share of US adults holding at least one unused gift card.
Source: Bankrate gift card survey; Capital One Shopping, 2024–2026.
Gaming and the gift card economy
Gaming is one of the most active corners of the gift card market: roughly a third of consumers (around 32%) reported buying a gaming-related gift card in recent surveys, and digital top-ups for PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, Nintendo and mobile wallets like Razer Gold are a big part of why the digital segment is growing so fast. Gaming gift cards are also unusually “sticky” — they are spent inside a single ecosystem, so once funds are loaded they rarely go unused.
Gift card fraud statistics
No gift card report is complete without the fraud picture, because regulators consistently rank gift cards among the top payment methods demanded by scammers. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported record overall fraud losses of $15.9 billion in 2025, up from $12.5 billion in 2024. Within that, gift cards remain a favourite tool of scammers precisely because the funds move fast and are hard to recover.
| Metric | Figure | Source / year |
|---|---|---|
| Total reported US fraud losses | $15.9 billion | FTC, 2025 |
| Reported losses paid via gift cards | At least $212 million | FTC, 2024 |
| Share of fraud reports involving gift cards | ~1 in 4 | FTC |
| Adults targeted by a gift-card payment scam | 34% | AARP / FTC |
| Highest-loss retailer card (avg. reported) | ~$2,500 per victim | FTC |
Methodology & sources
This report is a meta-analysis: we compile published figures from government bodies, consumer-finance publishers and market-research houses, and we flag where estimates differ rather than averaging them into a single number. Market-size figures are load value (the total amount loaded onto cards) unless stated otherwise. Where a figure is a forecast, we label it “projected”. All figures were current as of June 2026.
Primary sources used in this report:
- US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — Consumer Sentinel Network data & gift card fraud Data Spotlight: ftc.gov
- Bankrate — annual unused gift card survey: bankrate.com
- Capital One Shopping — Gift Card Statistics research roundup: capitaloneshopping.com
- Research and Markets — Digital Gift Card Market report: researchandmarkets.com
- Precedence Research — Gift Cards Market: precedenceresearch.com
- CNN Business — reporting on unspent US gift card balances: cnn.com
How to cite this report
Researchers, journalists and bloggers are welcome to reference the statistics in this report. If you use a figure, please credit Virtwave and link back to this page so your readers can trace the underlying sources. Here is a ready-made attribution line you can copy:
Source: Virtwave — “Gift Card Statistics 2026” (https://virtwave.com/blog/gift-card-statistics-2026)
Frequently Asked Questions
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Noor runs market research for Virtwave, tracking gift card volumes, redemption patterns and fraud trends across the 80+ countries we deliver to. She compiles our data reports from primary government sources (FTC, central banks) and the major market-research houses, and cross-checks every figure against our own transaction data before publication.
