FTC Puts Older Adults' Gift Card Scam Losses at $139 Million: What It Means for Companies That Give Gift Cards
The Federal Trade Commission's annual report to Congress on older consumers, sent on October 19, shows people aged 60 and over reported losing $139 million in 2025 to scams they paid with gift cards — up 12% on 2024. Gift cards were not the costliest payment method, but they were among the most common, and almost always in the same kind of scam: someone pretending to be somebody you trust.
What the FTC found
Protecting Older Consumers 2025–2026 is the report the FTC must send Congress each year under the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act. Its fraud data comes from Consumer Sentinel reports filed in calendar 2025. Reported fraud losses by people 60 and over reached about $3 billion, up from about $600 million in 2020, and the agency estimates the true cost, once unreported fraud is accounted for, at somewhere between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion.
Measured in dollars, gift cards sit in the middle of the pack. Measured by how often victims used them, they rank near the top: 12% of older adults' loss reports named a gift card, ahead of bank transfers (11%) and cryptocurrency (10%), and behind only credit cards (28%), debit cards (15%) and payment apps (15%).
| Payment method | Total reported loss | Change from 2024 | Share of loss reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank transfer or payment | $1,033M | +24% | 11% |
| Cryptocurrency | $603M | +33% | 10% |
| Cash | $196M | +26% | 4% |
| Wire transfer | $142M | +34% | 3% |
| Gift card | $139M | +12% | 12% |
| Check | $129M | +6% | 3% |
| Payment app or service | $110M | +38% | 15% |
| Credit card | $94M | +21% | 28% |
| Debit card | $39M | +27% | 15% |
| Money order | $16M | −10% | 1% |
Two derived figures help put that in proportion. Working back from the 12% increase, gift card losses in 2024 were roughly $124 million ($139M ÷ 1.12). And at about $139 million out of roughly $3 billion, gift cards account for under 5% of older adults' reported dollars lost while appearing in one loss report in eight — a payment method of many smaller losses rather than a few very large ones. Gift card losses grew more slowly than every other method except checks and money orders.
The pattern behind the number: impersonation
The report is specific about how gift cards are used. Credit, debit and payment-app losses cluster in online-shopping fraud; gift cards do not. In the FTC's words:
“Gift cards were the most frequent payment method reported by older adults on several common fraud types, including tech-support scams, romance scams, family- and friend-impersonation scams, and prize, sweepstakes, and lottery scams.”
— Federal Trade Commission, Protecting Older Consumers 2025–2026, p. 29
The report adds that gift card payments were “overwhelmingly” on impersonation scams, and describes callers posing as the FTC itself who tell people to “protect” their money by buying gift cards and sharing the codes. Losses to business impersonators — scammers posing as banks and well-known companies — reached $422 million among older adults, up 12%. One caveat on the year-on-year figures: the FTC took no reports from October 1 to November 13, 2025 because of the federal funding lapse, so 2025 totals cover a shorter collection window.
Why should an HR or finance team care?
Our employees are not the “older adults” in this report — is it relevant? Partly. Many workforces include people over 60, and retiree and long-service programs reach more of them. More broadly, the scam the report describes — a trusted name asking for gift card codes — works on any age group, and a company that sends gift cards is itself a trusted name scammers can borrow.
Does this change how gift card rewards are taxed or bought? No. The report is about consumer fraud, not regulation; it creates no new obligations for employers or card buyers. The FTC's consumer guidance stays the same: “No real business or government agency will ever tell you to buy a gift card to pay them.”
Where does a reward program fit? The genuine version of your reward and the scam version both arrive as a message about a gift card. The difference employees should be able to spot is direction: a real reward gives them a card; a scam asks them to buy one or read out a code.
For context on the wider market, our gift card statistics for 2026 collect spending and usage data, and the guide to bulk gift cards for employees covers how companies buy and distribute cards at volume. Because gift card rewards are also taxable wages, our recent story on the 2027 Social Security wage base explains what each reward costs in payroll tax.
Sources
- Federal Trade Commission, Protecting Older Consumers 2025–2026: A Report of the Federal Trade Commission (transmitted to Congress October 19, 2026) — Figure 7 (losses and loss reports by payment method), Figure 5 (losses by fraud type), aggregate losses, cost estimates, reporting-gap footnote, gift card findings (pp. 21–31). ftc.gov (PDF)
- Federal Trade Commission, “FTC Issues Annual Report to Congress on Agency's Actions to Protect Older Adults” (press release, October 19, 2026) — ~$3 billion reported losses, $119.5 billion upper estimate. ftc.gov
- Federal Trade Commission, “Avoiding and Reporting Gift Card Scams,” consumer guidance — quoted rule on gift card payments and steps after a loss. consumer.ftc.gov
- Luís Rijo, “Older Americans lost $3 billion to fraud in 2025, FTC tells Congress,” PPC Land (October 19, 2026) — secondary summary; figures cross-checked against the report. ppc.land
This article summarizes published FTC data and general fraud-prevention practice. It is not legal or security advice; FTC loss figures are self-reported and the agency notes most fraud goes unreported.
About the author
Maciej has worked in the digital gift card and rewards industry for over 5 years. For this story he read the FTC's report to Congress, its press release and its gift card scam guidance on October 20, 2026, took the payment-method figures directly from the report's Figure 7, and calculated the derived comparisons.