Yes and no. In your examples, there card has been sold by an individual merchant and there is not an individual account at a bank for your gift card. There is c

Yes and no. In your examples, there card has been sold by an individual merchant and there is not an individual account at a bank for your gift card. There is certainly money in Shell's bank, and a liability on Shell's balance sheet labelled "unused gift cards". If Shell were to go bankrupt, it would be quite difficult for you to recover the gift card balance. On the other hand, there are "universal gift cards" that work as a debit card and can be used anywhere (that supports that type of debit card). These would require a bank to hold the balance; when the card is used the money would go from that bank to the merchant's bank.