Anyone who has tried to use up the last few bucks on their open-loop gift card knows that most retailers don’t support split tender transactions, much less even know what one is.  A split tender transaction is where you pay for something using two different kinds of payment, such as a few dollars from your gift card and the rest in cash.  Asking a retailers to do a split tender transaction is a sure way to get looked at cross-eyed.

Well, I hadn’t thought about this much before coming across this story, but apparently split tender transactions are a problem online too.  I have an online storefront myself and the off-the-shelf software I used to create the storefront doesn’t support any type of split tender transaction, such as paying with multiple credit cards.  I suspect brick-and-mortar retailers have a similar problem with their POS systems; they just aren’t made to do split tenders.  Interestingly enough, restaurants are one place where split tenders are VERY common, as checks are routinely split across multiple credit or debit cards, because, well, they have to.  Customers would rebel if restaurants didn’t allow them.

The real problem is not that retailers, whether brick-and-mortar or online, don’t support split tender transactions.  The problem is that issuers of open-loop gift cards refuse to acknowledge there is a problem with customers getting the last few dollars from their gift cards.  A common retort to a suggestion of a problem is to point to a split tender transaction as an easy way for people to completely use up their card, when this clearly isn’t possibly in the vast majority of circumstances.

I’ll file this one under scams.