The only “use cases” I’ve seen are discount or niche. For example, Target and Bass Pro Shops/Cabelas in the US both offered some kind of 5 or 10 percent back/discount around Black Friday on gift cards. Niche would fall into, generally, some small enough business that these messes aren’t likely to happen, where the point of the gift is specifically later-consumption, like a local coffee place that you know someone loves, or say a specialty herbs and spices place for a cook (where you wouldn’t know exactly what they want from there, but that they WOULD be delighted to get something from the place).

Otherwise? Yeah. Gift / prepaid credit cards are a horrible scam, because they tend to have a percentage or, worse, flat fee to activate. $4 extra on a $50 card as a gift means you just paid 8 percent just to GET the card.

It is a way to extract money from the unlucky unbanked people, like the immigrants making your lunch or cleaning the streets. A part of systematic oppression of the outgroup.

I used to buy a gift card every ~week at a local sandwich place near where I worked and ate at every day. Their deal was a free meal (sandwich, chips, drink) with a $50 gift card purchase. Then I'd just pay with the card until it ran out.

There are people who don't own credit cards, and the app stores rarely offers any other "cash like" alternative other than gift cards.