Why We Started Gift Card Guard

Published February 27, 2025

I'm Jay, one of the co-founders of Gift Card Guard. Welcome to the app! 🥂

I've always liked a good origin story, so here's ours...

It all started one Christmas morning. We were sitting around the tree, and the gift exchange had just begun:

• I opened a Stop & Shop gift card from my mother-in-law and thought: "Oops! She gave me one of these last year that I never used." 😬
• Then, I looked at my sister-in-law and realized: "Dang, I still haven't used that Escape Room gift certificate she gave me." 😬😬
• To top it off, I also hadn't redeemed a voucher to a Ninja Warrior Gym from my sister. 😬😬😬

These were great gifts! It’s not that I didn’t like them. They just went unused because they weren’t top of mind.

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I started researching to see if I was the only one with this problem.

Turns out, more than 125 million Americans have at least 1 unspent gift card—for a grand total of $20+ billion in unspent gift card value.

For perspective, that’s roughly the annual budget of NASA! 🛰️

That was all I needed to hear.

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I created Gus the Guard Dog (our Scrappy Doo-inspired mascot), and contacted my software developer pal Steve. We got right to work and have been tinkering ever since, on either side of our day jobs.

Now, here we are…two cool dads (😎), driving our wives crazy with corny Gus jokes, and grooming our infant sons to take over the family gift card empire.

We’re having a blast building Gift Card Guard together, and we’ll be genuinely thrilled if it helps solve your gift card challenges.

There are tons of apps out there these days. Thanks for giving ours a shot!

Jay & Steve
Co-Founders, Gift Card Guard

P.S. The hardest part of using Gift Card Guard is uploading your initial batch of gift cards. But trust us—it’s worth it! Users who upload early save the most.