Not all about raise but how this is happening and who takes the hit.
In the case of a stolen credit card unless the shipment gift card or other was shipped and signed for by name and billing address on the credit card the retailer will get charged back... this means the retailer will delete those gift cards once they are notified of the charge back or simply take the hit. Most larger retailers and a lot of smaller ones will pay for a service that verifies this information before shipping it but they are not 100% perfect as there are ways of getting around this and making at the retailers discretion to ship...(long story as to how credit cards work and the laws you must follow)
If you were to go into a store in 2014 when the article was written they did not have Chip readers as on all credit cards today.. chip cards are impossible as of now to reproduce so putting a persons credit card number on a card these days is next to 0 unless you have an older card without the chip or find a retailer who does not have a chip reader in which case the retailer gets charged back period.
Another way is by programs that randomly test gist card numbers which is why the pin is so long on most gift cards now as it makes it difficult and why an online program only allows one test at a time -- of course for smaller retailers this is not the case and your gift card numbers are more easily stolen. This has also been a huge problem for gift cards issued by American rewards weather it is something that is inside or they are just easier for programs to figure out???? but this is also changed recently as they have put more security in place.
and I am sure there are other ways as well.......
How raise protects itself is as stated by them in the article how much they loose a year is beyond me but I am sure they are big enough to absorb what they are losing for now.... and the reason a lot of the older smaller ones are gone....
In the end a lot of the gift cards on raise are legitimate but you will always have someone trying to scam the system and this is why places like Target and
Walmart change how they sell gift cards as they loose as well in lot of these cases....in the end all of this causes retail prices to go up to make up for the loss and higher costs of processing credit cards and handling of gift cards... which has gone up by at least .5% in smaller retailers considerably more plus the huge cost of new POS software and chip readers Etc.... So in the end the person paying for this is the consumer... Target raises prices Raise decreases the discount it can offer to the buyer and pays the seller less based on the expected loss...
so to answer your question as to how any of these places get their money back... as above charging the honest person more which 99% of their sales otherwise they would not be in business.
