According to information compiled by the FTC roughly 25% of all fraud reports are related to gift card fraud and 34% of US adults said that they or someone they know had already been targeted by gift card scams. This is bad for consumers but even worse for merchants as the operational overhead to identify, manage and resolve gift card fraud ultimately generates merchant costs of 4 dollars on every dollar lost to gift card fraud (acc to Chargebacks911, July 2025).

To help card issuers to increase the security of gift cards, improve confidence in brands and limit consumer risks, Infineon Technologies AG has introduced two new secured prepaid tag solutions.

The two new additions to the Infineon security solutions address the challenges associated  with traditional gift cards by replacing the need for visible codes, barcodes, or magnetic stripes with a secured chip protected by cryptographic mechanisms. This chip can only be accessed using NFC (near-field communication) devices via cryptographic mechanisms, including a consumer's phone authenticated with the necessary data, allowing both retailers and consumers to simply "tap" the gift card for activation, check the balance, and redeem assets.

Secured EMV prepaid tag solution for open loop gift cards

Infineon’s Secured EMV prepaid tag solutions aim to mitigate these fraud issues for open loop gift cards by enabling a simple tap-and-pay approach at any POS merchant device or at any retail outlet processed via payment networks. The Secured EMV Prepaid Tag solution is fully EMV compatible and supports the latest approved Visa and MasterCard applets

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Secured prepaid tag solutions for closed loop gift cards

Secured prepaid tag solutions are intended to be used for closed loop gift cards, which are processed in retailer-specific or closed-loop environments.

Secured prepaid tag solutions for closed loop gift cards is fully compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructures for smart cards and paper tickets.

Partnership with Karta Gift Card Ltd.

Infineon’s first eco-system partner in the gift card industry is Karta Gift Card Ltd., a provider of secured access and processing capabilities of prepaid gift cards issued by retailers. For both Infineon’s secured prepaid tag solutions, Karta provides support of AES based encryption protocols and processing capabilities. Karta’s technology offers real-time cryptographic validation with every tap for seamless adoption by gift card retailers. With the combination of Infineon and Karta technologies, every gift card transaction will be enhanced with secured dynamic NFC tags and state-of-the-art cryptographic intelligence to avoid gift card cloning, skimming and replay attacks.

Infineon Market News