Today’s news is chock full of a few nice anecdotes about gift card laws.

Maryland is considering a law that would allow the state to claim 70% of unused gift card balances. Hmmm, would that make them more or less likely to pass gift card laws that would benefit the consumer? One thing I found particular humorous was the comment made by lobbyist (for retailers) Bruce Bereano “The money belongs to the person. It doesn’t belong to the state.” This is the first I’ve heard that retailers are so fiercely defending a consumers right to get the full value out of their gift card. But we really know that the retailers just want to keep all that unspent free money all to themselves. Also shocking in this article is the fact that 32 states have a law like this (I didn’t know that).

Illnois is considering a law like California’s whereby consumers could cash out gift card balances less than $10. What is interesting though is that they are considering including open-loop cards (or as they call them, reloadable cards).