You wouldn’t put cash in the mail, would you?  In some respects, putting cash in a letter can actually be safer than putting a fully activated gift card in the mail; as long as the envelope is thick enough to prevent the contents inside from showing through under a bright light.  Gift cards on the other hand can easily be felt in normal letters and especially greeting card-sized envelopes.

This has been a problem for a long time and hardly a week goes by where we don’t hear about a Postal employee (and even UPS) getting busted for stealing gift cards out of the mail.

So why aren’t gift card issuers doing anything to circumvent this?  For instance, how about allowing a gift card to be locked via the retailer or banks website, and only unlocked using a specific code that can be emailed to the recipient or sent in a different letter?  Or perhaps at the checkout counter providing an activation code on the receipt?