Amid Card Cashing Concerns, Starbucks Temporarily Suspends Sales of Physical and E-Cards

"Preventing Cases of Misuse for Cash Conversion Purposes"

Starbucks Korea has temporarily suspended the sale of prepaid cards as concerns grow over so-called "card cashing" schemes that exploit the company's temporary refund policy following the recent "Tank Day" controversy.

Yonhap News Agency

Starbucks announced that, from May 28 to June 14, sales of unregistered physical Starbucks cards will be temporarily suspended. The company explained that this measure is intended to prevent cases where both physical and e-cards are misused for cash conversion purposes.

Due to the suspension, the sale of e-card vouchers available on online platforms will also be restricted during this period. The 100,000 won denomination will be discontinued across all platforms, while denominations ranging from 10,000 to 70,000 won will be subject to different restrictions depending on the platform.

On May 26, after Starbucks announced a full refund policy for prepaid cards, there were reports of individuals purchasing Starbucks e-cards or gift certificates at discounted prices on secondhand trading platforms and then redeeming them for their face value at Starbucks, pocketing the difference. This has heightened concerns about card cashing, where people recharge prepaid cards in large amounts using credit cards and then receive the money back in cash.

Previously, faced with increasing demands for refunds of prepaid card balances, Starbucks announced that, from June 1 to June 14, it would temporarily allow full refunds upon customer request, regardless of the percentage of the balance used. Under the previous terms of service, customers could only receive a refund for the remaining balance if they had used at least 60% of the last recharge amount.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.