For many years retail stores didn't care about stolen credit card information being used to buy gift cards. The banking sector ate those fraud losses. Once the

For many years retail stores didn't care about stolen credit card information being used to buy gift cards. The banking sector ate those fraud losses. Once the payment card oligopoly shifted the liability onto merchants, retailers had to eat way more fraud. Retailers immediately took down gift card displays, rushed to upgrade to chip terminals, and when they put the displays back they stopped selling $500 cards.