You typically get a physical card. There are two numbers printed on the card.
One is covered with a security decal, so only the recipient can read the number. The other is exposed and visible. The card is often wrapped in a cardboard sleeve so only the visible number is exposed
When you buy the card, the cashier scans the exposed number, which activates the card at the time of payment. You do receive an activation receipt, but as far as I know, that serves no purpose other than possibly to help settle a dispute with the merchant after the fact.
The recipient of the card peels off the security decal to reveal the redemption code, which he uses.
This should work, but as others have pointed out already, there have been reports where a scammer has managed to remove the cardboard sleeve and security decal, capture the number, and then packages it all together again and place the result back on a store shelf. So when someone else activates it, the thief quickly redeems it before the recipient gets a chance.
Yes, I read that. But I don’t believe the “Apple Store Gift Card” is sold by Apple any more. The only gift card they sell is the “Apple Gift Card” – which is ‘the card for everything Apple’ and has no restrictions on how it is used within their ecosystem. The Apple Store Gift Card has not been sold for several years. If you have evidence to the contrary, I’d love to hear about it.
To the extent that there are still any “Apple Store Gift Cards” out there, old stock from years ago, I do not believe that they continue to be limited to use for merchandise, but it’s sort of academic since I don’t think there’s really any place one can find or buy these old cards.
Ach, sorry, I was assuming more than you were asking. I can find only one page that seems to sell the Apple Store Gift Card, but it’s on an Apple Education site in Malaysia, which suggests it’s either geo-specific or just an old page.
I buy Apple Digital Gift Cards** from my bank (UBS Switzerland), which I buy with KeyPoints (received by using their credit card). The purchase gives me 25% savings, as I only have to give 75 KeyPoints for CHF 100.
Every end of the year I use my unused KeyPoints in this way. Everything happens digitally, there is no physical shipping.
Is this type of purchase of Apple Digital Gift Cards also at risk?
I need to write more about this soon, but a reader told me that he had problems with a digital gift card that Apple gave him for an iPad trade-in. It doesn’t get any more official or virtual than that. So there are no guarantees.
Apple would likely be well advised to introduce such a system here in the States seeing as to how common this gift card fraud is. Must be very expensive also for retailers who get dragged into investigations and are faced with refund claims.