Who actually likes gift cards, as in, would still use them despite better alternatives existing?
If giving/receiving cash wasn't already illegal or socially unacceptable, gift card issuers would have started lobbying for that yesterday.
Other than that original use case, many people use them as a form of poorly functional digital cash (since it's not fungible across issuers) that really ought to exist natively in a currency these days.
I regularly got dunkin donuts, starbucks and the like gift cards for less the face value (sometimes half of face) and therefore strongly preferred using them when I shopped at those stores (at least when I had a balance).
If giving/receiving cash wasn't already illegal or socially unacceptable, gift card issuers would have started lobbying for that yesterday.
Other than that original use case, many people use them as a form of poorly functional digital cash (since it's not fungible across issuers) that really ought to exist natively in a currency these days.