£336m in forgotten gift cards: how to find yours before summer costs pile up

Before you spend a penny on a wedding outfit, a new suitcase, school shoes or spare bedding for summer guests, it is worth checking one place first: your drawers and your inbox. There is a very good chance you already have money sitting there that you have simply forgotten about.

New analysis from Investing.co.uk found that M&S and John Lewis alone have a combined £335.8 million in outstanding gift card and voucher balances sitting on their books. M&S reported £234.8 million in gift card-related liabilities in its accounts to March 2026, up from £215.1 million a year earlier. John Lewis Partnership had £101 million in unredeemed gift card and voucher liabilities as of January 2026. Those are two retailers. One category. Over a third of a billion pounds in money that belongs to customers and has not been spent.

Not all of it is forgotten, of course. Plenty of people will use their cards perfectly normally. But a meaningful chunk of it is sitting in kitchen drawers, buried in inboxes and quietly expiring, and with summer costs adding up across holidays, weddings, school uniforms and family get-togethers, now is exactly the right moment to go and look.

Why do so many gift cards go unspent in the UK?

Gift cards are big business in the UK, and the scale of forgotten gift cards across the country is striking. The market is expected to reach £11.7 billion by 2029, and sales rose 9.5% in the first half of 2024 alone, with digital cards growing even faster at 17% as people moved toward quick e-gifts. The speed and convenience of sending a digital gift card is exactly what makes them so easy to forget about. You open the email once, make a mental note, and never quite get round to it.

The numbers on how much this costs people bear that out. Ipsos polling found that 11% of UK adults had at least one voucher expire before they used it in the past year, losing an average of £75.30 per person. For people aged 16 to 34 the figure is even higher, at £86. That is real money, and it represents nothing more than good intentions that got lost in a busy life.

How to find forgotten gift cards before they expire

Toby Robinson, chief executive at Investing.co.uk, puts it simply: "A lot of people are trying to cut back at the moment, but they may already have money sitting in a drawer or buried in an inbox. That old gift card might cover a wedding outfit, a new suitcase, school shoes, bedding for the spare room or half a food shop before guests arrive."

Here is where to start.

Check the expiry date on anything you find

Expiry rules vary between retailers and even between card types from the same retailer, which is where people get caught out. Some physical cards carry a two-year expiry from the date of purchase, while digital cards can have different terms altogether. Robinson's advice is direct: "Do not assume you have loads of time. If the date is coming up, spend it on something useful and move on." Even if you do not have a specific purchase in mind, most gift cards can be used toward an everyday shop rather than saved for something special that never quite arrives.

Search your inbox properly, not just your wallet

Digital gift cards are particularly easy to lose track of. You receive them, open the email, and file them away in the back of your mind as something to deal with later. Search your inbox for terms like "gift card", "voucher", "M&S", "John Lewis", "birthday", "Christmas" and "wedding" — particularly around dates when you know you received gifts. If someone sent you an e-gift in the last couple of years and you cannot remember spending it, the email is almost certainly still there.

Spend small balances rather than leaving them behind

The last few pounds on a gift card is where money most commonly gets wasted. People leave a £4 or £5 balance because it feels too small to bother with, and it quietly expires or gets forgotten again. Robinson's point is worth taking on board: "People leave small balances behind because they feel like nothing, but it is better off your next shop than sitting there unused." Socks, toiletries, wrapping paper, food — most retailers will accept a gift card alongside another payment method, so a small balance can always be used toward something you were already planning to buy.

How much could you save by checking for old gift cards this summer?

With the cost of summer mounting up across holidays, weddings, school uniforms and the general business of life in June and July, the habit of checking for forgotten gift cards before spending is one of the simplest and most overlooked money habits going. It does not require a budget spreadsheet or a change in behaviour - just thirty seconds in a drawer and a minute in your inbox. If Ipsos is right that the average person loses £75 a year to expired vouchers, finding and spending forgotten gift cards before they expire is one of the fastest ways to put that money back where it belongs.

If you find one, use it. It was always your money.

Help! My giftcard has already expired!

This is where the news gets a little less straightforward, and it is worth being honest about it. There is currently no legal minimum expiry period for gift cards in the UK, which means retailers are free to set their own policies and are under no legal obligation to honour a card once it has expired. Once a card has lapsed, you technically have no consumer rights to the remaining balance.

That said, it is absolutely worth asking anyway, particularly with larger retailers. People have had success simply going into their local M&S and asking for expired cards to be renewed with a new expiry date. There is no guarantee it will work, but a polite conversation in store or through customer services costs nothing and has worked for others in exactly this situation. The key word is politely - store staff are doing you a favour if they agree to help, and they are far more likely to do so if the request is reasonable and the approach is friendly.

For John Lewis specifically, if you check your balance or make even a small purchase on a card that has not yet expired, it resets the two-year countdown from that point. So if you have a John Lewis or Waitrose card that is approaching its expiry date, spending even £1 on it extends the validity for another two years from that transaction. Worth knowing before the date passes. Office for National Statistics

A couple of other things worth being aware of:

Some retailers do not impose expiry dates at all, including Apple Store, Starbucks, Theatre Tokens and National Book Tokens. If you have cards from any of these, they will still be valid regardless of how long they have been in a drawer
Some retailers apply very short expiry periods of just 12 months, including Ryanair, Costa Coffee and Vue. If you received a gift card from any of these and have not checked it recently, it may already be beyond its validity period
If you are in a situation where a retailer is refusing to honour a card and you believe the expiry terms were not clearly communicated at the time of purchase, Which? notes that businesses can face enforcement action for misleading consumers over expiry terms — raising a formal complaint and referencing this is worth doing if the amount is significant

One option that does not get talked about enough is simply swapping with someone who will actually use it. If you have an M&S gift card but never shop there, there is a reasonable chance someone in your family or friendship group has the opposite problem - a John Lewis card they will not use but would happily swap for yours of the same value. A quick message in a family group chat or to a few friends asking whether anyone wants to do a straight swap costs nothing and means both cards get used rather than both expiring in separate drawers. There are also dedicated gift card exchange websites where you can sell unwanted cards for a percentage of their face value or exchange them for ones you will actually use, though the swap between people you know is the simplest version.

The wider picture is that the UK lags behind countries including Ireland and the United States, both of which require gift cards to remain valid for a minimum period by law. Consumer groups including Which? have campaigned for similar protections in the UK, but no legislation is currently in force. Until that changes, the best protection is using cards promptly rather than relying on being able to use them later.

What happens to your gift card if the retailer goes bust?

This is where the picture gets genuinely difficult, and it is worth being honest about it rather than offering false hope.

If a retailer goes into administration, the administrator can and often will refuse to accept gift cards at any point during the process. If the retailer goes into liquidation and closes entirely, gift card holders are treated as unsecured creditors, which places them low on the list of priorities when the company's assets are distributed. In practice, this means many people get little or nothing back.

That said, there are steps worth taking, and taking them quickly matters.

The first thing to do if you hear that a retailer you have a gift card for is in trouble is to call or visit the store immediately and try to spend it before the administrator makes a decision. Sometimes administrators will honour gift cards during the trading period, but they can reverse that decision at any time — so speed is everything.

If you cannot spend it in time, there are two other routes worth pursuing:

If the person who bought the gift card paid by credit card and the single purchase was over £100, they may be able to make a Section 75 claim under the Consumer Credit Act to get the money back from their card provider. If the original purchase was under £100 or was made by debit card, a chargeback claim through the card provider is worth attempting, though it is not guaranteed to succeed and must typically be made within 120 days of the original transaction.

If neither route applies, you can make a claim in writing to the administrator with proof of the gift card and its remaining balance. You will be placed in the queue of unsecured creditors. It can take up to 12 months to process and there is no guarantee of getting any money back - but submitting the claim at least ensures you are in the process rather than missing out entirely.

The uncomfortable broader truth is that UK law offers gift card holders very little protection when a retailer fails. The House of Commons Library has flagged this as an ongoing consumer protection gap, and consumer groups have called for reform, but no legislation is currently in place. The most effective protection is the same as with expiry dates: use gift cards promptly rather than saving them for the perfect moment that may never arrive.