The Treasury Department had indicated that it would not begin enforcing the law until after it had met with the NJRMA and issued new guidance for complying with the law, but has yet to issue new guidance on how to implement the data collection requirements.ĭuring the last week of March, American Express became the first company to pull its gift cards from New Jersey. Following the Third Circuit’s decision, the NJRMA sought to engage the New Jersey Department of the Treasury on behalf of retailers to discuss, among other matters, implementation of the ZIP code collection provision, which is intended to facilitate the escheatment of cards to the state after they have expired. This decision lifted a stay of the data collection provision of New Jersey’s new stored value card law, which became law in the summer of 2010 and amended the state’s escheat law. Sidamon-Eristoff requiring issuers or sellers of stored value and other gift cards to collect address information (or, at a minimum, ZIP codes) from purchasers of those cards. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (“Third Circuit”) issued a decision in New Jersey Retail Merchants Association (NJRMA) v. Sellers that offer gift cards in New Jersey, or that offer “daily deal” vouchers in partnership with Groupon (or run similar promotions), should take note of these developments, summarized in more detail below.Īs we have previously reported, in January of this year the U.S. On the other side of the country, in California, Groupon reached an $8.5 million settlement in multidistrict litigation alleging that the promotions company sold vouchers with unlawful expiration dates, in violation of the law of several states.
At the end of March and the beginning of April, several of the biggest gift card sellers announced that they would stop selling gift card products in New Jersey, on the basis that they could not ensure that third parties would comply with the data collection provisions of the New Jersey stored value card law. During the past couple of weeks, there have been several important new developments in the gift card industry that may inform the next steps of sellers of gift cards and similar instruments in New Jersey and other states.
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