Are these cards actually paid in advance? Or is much of their bulk effectively debt that would need to be repaid with a pretty low probability? See various coupons, mail-in rebates, points that you can only redeem in a particular store, etc. They look like a great deal, and are cheap to issue because only some of them are going to be redeemed.

While it's not explicitly stated, the stats indicate this is gift cards that have been paid in advance.

That means "Get $20 back when you spend $100" and "Get a $20 gift card when you spend $100" wouldn't be included. Not sure about "here's $20 to spend on your next visit"—I suspect that's really the same as the above, financially, just presented differently, in that there's not $20 sitting in 200,000 individual accounts waiting to be spent.

Oh wow. And here I thought it was bad when someone stole my "dining dollars" card back in college.