Heavy lobbying by shopping mall owners in 2007 convinced the government of Manitoba to exempt mall issued gift cards from the law they passed that prohibits expiration dates and fees on gift cards. Legislators of course are loath to advertise this fact and people are getting bitten by the disparity, expecting their mall gift cards to have no fees or expiration dates. This is strikinly similar to the complete ignorance of open-loop cards by any gift card legislation issued by US states prior to the recent gift card statutes in the Credit Card Reform Act of 2009. Who knows if it was lobbying by the card issuers that gained them their exemption or just dumb luck, but they definitely didn’t dodge the bullet at the Federal level.