[nine_k]

Are these cards actually paid in advance? Or is much of their bulk effectively debt that would need to be repaid with a pretty low probability? See various coupons, mail-in rebates, points that you can only redeem in a particular store, etc. They look like a great deal, and are cheap to issue because only some of them are going to be redeemed.

[gffrd]

While it's not explicitly stated, the stats indicate this is gift cards that have been paid in advance.

That means "Get $20 back when you spend $100" and "Get a $20 gift card when you spend $100" wouldn't be included. Not sure about "here's $20 to spend on your next visit"—I suspect that's really the same as the above, financially, just presented differently, in that there's not $20 sitting in 200,000 individual accounts waiting to be spent.