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Hi,
I hope you can help me. I'm designing a computer program to be used for personal money management, and I'm having trouble coming up with a classification name for certain items.

I need a word (or short term) that describes gift certificates, in-store credits (as might be received when you return an item without a receipt), and gift cards/cash cards (MC/Visa cards that may be received for a product rebate or as a gift, etc.), and also differentiates them from "deposit accounts" (checking and savings accounts) and "credit accounts" (credit cards, etc.). The most relevant difference for my purpose is that the gift certificates, and the others in the group, start off at a certain monetary value which reduces as the money value is spent, and generally it’s not possible to add money value back to them.

Thanks very much.

Originally, gift certificates were a spend it all at once deal, which is why businesses liked them. The customer almost always spent more than the total, or never used the thing at all. Pure profit, there.

With the advent and proliferation of cards, this is less common. I would call them store-issued debit/rebate cards.

Well, you could make up a name like Stocregifcasreb Card for Store Credit Gift Cash Rebate Card, but that's a bit long and cryptic, and would only be of use as a variable name in your code.

Why not call them One-way Debit Cards, or One-way Money Cards, since that's what they are: money flows out of them but not back in to them; or, you could call them Money Cards or Plastic Money, sinced that's also what they are and represent: once you spend it, it's gone.

I assume you're working on something analagous to Microsoft Money or Quicken.

Thanks, guys.

The term "store-issued debit/rebate cards" doesn't cover in-store credit or gift/cash cards or gift certificates.

Unfortunately, in the same way, things with "plastic" or "card" implicitly exclude things like in-store credits which may only exist on a receipt and the store's computers (hence, no card or plastic).

I need an umbrella term to cover them all that also doesn't overlap with the purpose of "credit accounts".

And Stargzer, love the quote in your signature.

I would go with "gift accounts" or "pre-paid accounts".

as mentioned above, gift certificates and gift plastic cards
are still not used, much to the delight of retailers. We
recently had a TV story wherein the reporter asked
a number of persons, and 55% replied, that they had
not yet redeemed a gift card from this past holiday.