Maybe. It's easy enough to send money to someone using the phone these days, so I'm not sure cashless would lead to gift cards here in Switzerland (or my native Sweden.) But I agree it's not a very fun package to open when it's just a promise to use Twint/Swish to transfer money.

Oh, maybe the real use for gift cards is that the receiver can't haggle. "I know you wanted to give me $200, but how about we make that an even $500 instead?" :)

I mean, I don't really see that happening. Sweden is for all intents and purposes cashless these days, and I don't think we have more giftcards now than we did in the 90s when cash was commonplace.

To clarify about the cashlessness of Sweden: cash still exists, and you can still get government printed bills, but many places have stopped accepting them, and these days whenever someone has non-foreign cash it becomes the topic of discussion: "why the hell do you have those?"

Honestly I don't know that they're useful for anything except donating to homeless(and even they usually have swish these days) or buying illegal drugs

How do you give money to kids? Where I live if you're under 18 you can't get any kind of bank card.

In France, when I was a kid, there were some cards you could get that are usually for kids. They actually belong to the parents, and are attached to their accounts. I think it's also fairly limited in what amount you can pay, and doesn't draw from the main account but needs to be "topped-up".

I've never had one, though, so I don't know the specifics.

Apparently, BNP Paribas (one of the major local banks) now has a "teen offer", for people 12-17 yo. This seems to still be attached to the parents' account with the same bank, but the kids get to "manage" the account.

https://mabanque.bnpparibas/fr/offre-ados

My youngest (step)son had his own debit card through Bank of America when he was nine. We were on his account. He had his own login when he was 13.

I had a debit card when I was 14, but I think you can get one even sooner if your parents sign off in it. I think one of the reasons I didn't get a debit card sooner was because when I was a kid, cash was still relatively common (yes, I'm old - I remember using cash in Sweden!)

This doesn't seem right. Cashless usually means electronic currency equivalent to physical currency.

Card payments are not gift cards.

Whether the form is electronic or physical is irrelevant to my argument. If you read it again carefully you'll see that it's about state-backed versus private currencies. Don't let the technology dazzle you.

In a way they are, the difference is that they have the issuer network and banks' reputation behind it and so the number of shops that accept it is not a singleton set.