Check whether your gift card terms stack up

This is commonly used by retailers, hospitality venues, ecommerce brands, service businesses, and multi-location operators that sell physical or digital gift cards to the public. It is especially useful if your terms have not been reviewed for some time, if you run seasonal promotions, or if your gift cards are sold through more than one channel. A review can also help where customer complaints keep arising about expiry, partial redemption, lost cards, promotional exclusions, or whether cash refunds are available in certain situations.

The main issues are usually not just the card itself, but the customer impression created by the offer and the supporting terms. Problems often arise around expiry periods, blackout dates, fees, restrictions on use, statements about refunds or replacements, and promotions that attach extra conditions to the card. If a gift card is tied to a campaign, giveaway or prize structure, the terms need to reflect the actual promotion mechanics and prize structure. The legal position can turn on how the offer is presented across checkout pages, receipts, emails and in-store signage.

We review your current gift card terms and the surrounding customer-facing wording you provide, then give written feedback on key legal risk areas and suggested improvements. That can include comments on expiry wording, redemption limits, refund language, promotional conditions, and whether the terms line up with how the card is actually sold and used. Privacy wording works best when it is matched to your real collection, use, storage and disclosure practices, and how the gift card process works in practice. One round of follow-up questions on the written advice is included.

No lawyer should present this as a certainty based only on a limited review. It helps clarify the legal risks in scope, with broader compliance depending on your systems, documents and day-to-day conduct. The answer can depend on the exact wording customers see, the sales channel, the promotion structure, and how your team handles exceptions in practice. If your business changes the mechanics later, such as adding bonus credits, campaign conditions, or third-party redemption options, the legal position may also change and the terms may need another review.

Sometimes the issue is not the gift card alone, but the promotion wrapped around it. Standard gift card sales may not trigger extra steps, but permit requirements can vary depending on where and how the promotion runs. For example, if the gift card is offered as part of a competition, giveaway, chance-based campaign, or multi-channel promotion, there may be additional considerations beyond the base terms. If that applies to your offer, tell us how the promotion works so we can identify whether separate advice or a wider scope is needed.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Gift Card Compliance Review service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.