What voucher terms and conditions do
You have decided to sell vouchers. Maybe it is a gift card push before Christmas, a discounted service voucher to fill quiet weeks, or store credit offered after a customer complaint. Before the first voucher goes out, someone has to write the rules that govern it, and this is usually the moment an operator discovers that voucher terms are not a marketing afterthought. They are a contract with the customer, made at the point of sale, and they will be read most carefully by the people they disappoint.
Voucher terms are the rules behind every sale and redemption: what the voucher is worth, what it can be used for, when it stops being valid, how it is redeemed, and what happens when something goes wrong. They bind the person who buys the voucher and the person who receives it, and they sit alongside your website terms, your booking policy and your privacy policy. What they cannot do is displace the consumer protections in the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), which operates as Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). The ACL applies whether or not your terms mention it, so the real drafting job is to build rules that work commercially and survive contact with the statute.
The essential clauses, one by one
The clauses below follow the life of a voucher: what it is, what it does, when it ends, and what happens at the counter. Not every business needs every clause, but each one answers a question a customer will eventually ask, either before purchase or in a complaint.
Defining what counts as a voucher
The first clause should say precisely what the voucher is. "Voucher" is a loose word that covers at least four different products, and customers treat them differently:
- Gift cards: prepaid value redeemable for goods or services, usually for a set dollar amount.
- Discount vouchers: an entitlement to a discount, such as $20 off a purchase over $100.
- Service vouchers: a named service, such as one 60-minute massage or a 10-class pass.
- Store credit: value issued after a return or as a goodwill gesture.
The distinction matters because the ACL defines a gift card broadly as an article in physical or electronic form, commonly known as a gift card or gift voucher, that is redeemable for goods or services. Once your product falls inside that definition, the three-year expiry and display rules in the next section apply to it. A clause that calls everything a "voucher" and applies one set of rules to all of them is where the trouble starts, because the customer's reasonable expectation of a gift card, a discount code and a store credit are quite different. Define each product, or define the single product you actually sell, and let the rest of the terms follow that definition.
What the voucher can be redeemed for
State the value or entitlement, then state the exclusions. If the voucher cannot be used on sale items, at certain locations, or during peak periods, that restriction belongs in this clause and on the voucher itself. This is also a marketing document. Section 18 of the ACL prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's guidance on discount vouchers says a business must clearly state all conditions and restrictions on how a voucher can be used. Advertising "valid on anything in store" while the fine print excludes your most popular products is exactly the gap between promotion and terms that generates complaints, and a complaint can become an ACCC report.
The drafting choice that matters most here is proximity. The exclusions customers actually care about, such as blackout periods and excluded products, should appear with the offer, not buried in a paragraph numbered 14. If a restriction is surprising enough that a customer would feel tricked, it is a restriction to surface, not to hide.
Expiry dates and the three-year gift card rule
This is the clause with a statutory floor. Since 1 November 2019, a gift card supplied to a consumer must be redeemable for at least three years from the day it is supplied. If you print a shorter expiry, the term does not simply breach the rules: it is void, and the card is taken to expire three years after supply. You can still be penalised for supplying the card in the first place.
The display requirement is separate and easy to miss. The date the card ceases to be redeemable, or the words "no expiry date", must appear prominently on the card itself. A card that shows an expiry date somewhere in the fine print, or not at all, breaches the ACL even if it meets the three-year minimum, and penalties apply. Related provisions void any term that charges post-supply fees, such as activation fees, account-keeping fees and inactivity fees, or that shortens the redeemable period below three years.
The three-year rule does not apply to every voucher. The ACCC lists carve-outs that include cards donated for promotional purposes, vouchers supplied at a genuine discount, rewards issued under customer loyalty programs or employee reward schemes, cards redeemable only during a specified event period, and second-hand cards. Discount codes, service vouchers and store credit usually fall outside the gift card definition altogether, so no statutory minimum applies to them.
None of that makes the drafting easier for the non-gift-card products, because customer expectations do not follow the statute. A customer who bought a $200 voucher in June and finds it dead in November will treat the expiry as a trap regardless of what the law allows. The clause should therefore cover:
- the expiry date or how it is calculated, and whether it runs from purchase or from first use;
- whether the voucher must be redeemed by that date, not merely booked by it;
- whether extensions are ever offered, and on what basis;
- if the card can be reloaded or topped up, how the expiry of topped-up value is calculated.
How and where the voucher is redeemed
For booking-based businesses, the redemption clause is the operating manual. It should cover the booking channel, how far in advance bookings must be made, blackout dates, whether the voucher is valid at all locations or only one, and whether multiple vouchers can be stacked in a single transaction. Typical elements include:
- Booking process: the online link, phone number or email, and who books when the voucher is a gift.
- Notice periods: how far ahead a voucher booking must be made, such as seven days.
- Blackout periods: weekends, public holidays or peak season.
- Location limits: a single site, franchise locations, or online only.
- Stacking: whether two vouchers can be combined, or one per booking.
Terms your staff will not follow are worse than no terms at all. A rule that every voucher booking needs 14 days' notice, applied only when the team remembers, produces inconsistent treatment and the disputes that follow. Draft the redemption clause the way the business actually operates, then train the team to apply it that way.
Partial redemptions, balances and change
For dollar-value vouchers, say what happens when the customer spends less than the voucher is worth. Most customers expect to keep the balance, and most expect no cash change. The clause should state whether the voucher is single-use or multi-use, how the remaining balance is tracked and displayed, and whether the customer can pay the difference when a purchase exceeds the voucher's value. If the voucher is single-use, say so plainly, because a customer who spent half of a $100 voucher and is told the rest is forfeited will not accept the explanation that it was in the terms.
Cash change is a policy choice rather than a legal requirement, but it should be one clear sentence. Businesses that leave it unsaid end up negotiating it at the counter, which is where voucher policies quietly die.
Refunds, cancellations and no-shows
Blanket statements such as "no refunds under any circumstances" do not survive contact with the ACL. The consumer guarantees in the ACL apply to the supply of goods and services, and the provisions on guarantees being excluded by contract make void any term that purports to exclude, restrict or modify them. A voucher does not cancel the customer's rights if there is a major problem with what you supplied, so a refund clause should distinguish between change of mind, which you can decline, and a failure to supply what was promised, which you cannot.
What you can do is set reasonable business rules. A cancellation fee that is transparent, disclosed at the time of purchase and proportionate to the loss can be enforced. A surprise clause that treats a no-show as forfeiting the full value is the kind of term that looks one-sided and invites a dispute. Where the voucher operates like a deposit, such as a "pay now, book later" offer, its forfeiture on cancellation needs to be fair and clearly explained, and it is worth having a lawyer check the wording before the first customer loses money under it.
Lost, stolen or damaged vouchers
Decide the policy and write it down. The common options are to treat the voucher like cash and refuse replacement, or to replace it where the customer can show proof of purchase and the original has not been redeemed. Whichever rule you choose, staff need a consistent process, because a customer who lost a $150 voucher should not get a different answer on a different day.
One point worth knowing: the ban on post-supply fees does not stop you charging a reissue fee for a lost, stolen or damaged card. The ACCC expressly lists the reissue of such a card outside the post-supply fee rules. But a reissue fee should be disclosed in the terms, not discovered at the counter.
Transfer and resale
State whether the voucher is bearer-style, redeemable by whoever holds it, or tied to a named person or email address. If you want to stop vouchers being resold on marketplaces, say so in the terms and apply the rule consistently. The bearer-versus-named choice also affects your obligations if you collect personal information when issuing or redeeming vouchers. Names, email addresses, phone numbers and birthdays collected for voucher administration are personal information, so you need a privacy policy that explains how it is handled, and the voucher terms should point to it.
Optional clauses worth considering
Most voucher terms are complete with the clauses above, but a few situational additions are worth including when they apply:
- Giveaway and competition terms: if vouchers are issued through a "tag a friend to win" style promotion, the campaign can be regulated as a trade promotion lottery under state and territory laws, and the requirements differ between jurisdictions.
- Change of ownership and closure: the ACCC's guidance notes that a new owner who buys the business as a going concern must honour existing gift cards, while consumers become unsecured creditors if the company becomes insolvent. A clause cannot fix either outcome, but it should not pretend otherwise.
- Reload and top-up mechanics: if cards can be reloaded, spell out how topped-up value is tracked and when it expires.
- Bulk and corporate sales: vouchers sold in bulk to employers or as client gifts may need different redemption, invoicing and replacement rules.
- Variation of terms: a clause allowing the business to update the terms for future vouchers, without affecting vouchers already sold.
When a lawyer should review your voucher terms
A review of voucher terms is a short, contained piece of work, and it is the kind of drafting where a lawyer earns the fee before the dispute exists. An Artificer Legal practitioner would start by classifying the voucher against the gift card definition, because that single decision determines whether the three-year expiry and display rules apply. The second pass checks the expiry and fee clauses against the gift card provisions for compliance with the minimum period and the display requirement. The third looks at the unfair contract terms regime: since 9 November 2023, proposing, using or relying on an unfair term in a standard form contract with a consumer or small business can attract significant penalties, and the small business threshold is broad, covering businesses with fewer than 100 employees or less than $10 million in turnover. Finally, we reconcile the voucher terms with your website terms, booking policy and privacy policy, so the customer-facing documents do not contradict each other.
A review is worth doing before a large campaign, before you move voucher sales online, or when you have already seen the first complaint about an expiry or a blackout date. Fixing the terms before launch is cheaper than defending the dispute after it.
The clause that decides most voucher disputes
If one clause decides whether voucher terms work, it is the expiry clause, not because expiry is the most interesting issue but because it is the one with a statutory floor. A gift card with a 12-month expiry is not merely poorly drafted: the term is void, the expiry is automatically extended to three years, and you can be penalised for the card that carried it. Draft it as if a regulator will read it, because the display rule means a regulator, or a customer, can read it straight off the card.
The rest of the job is clarity. Define the voucher, state what it buys, write the booking and redemption rules the way your team will actually apply them, and put the restrictions customers care about where they can see them before purchase. Done that way, voucher terms do the work they are for: preventing the argument at the counter instead of losing it later.