NewsDonaSeptember 20266 min read
The $4.17 nobody ever spends
That gift card in your drawer with a few dollars left on it is real money. Dona gets it off the card and into your bank account. This post covers why we built it, how it works and what it costs.
Open the report, 5 pagesDownload the PDFMost people have one: a Visa or Mastercard gift card, mostly spent, with an amount left that is too small to bother with and too awkward to use at a register. Individually it is a rounding error. Nationally it is about $27 billion.
$244
average unused gift card, voucher or store credit per holder in 2024, up from $116 in 2021.
$27B
estimated unspent across US adults. 43% of them hold at least one forgotten card.
37
states where gift cards are exempt from escheatment, so the balance never reaches a database you could search.
70 to 80%
what resale typically returns on face value. On $244 that is $49 to $73 handed over for the privilege.
The premise
The money is still owed to you. Nobody is chasing it on your behalf. Unclaimed property law is meant to catch forgotten money, and for gift cards it mostly doesn’t — in 37 states they are exempt from escheatment or no law requires it. The established way to get value back is resale, which takes a fifth to a quarter of the balance for doing it.
Dona never buys your card and never takes a cut of what is on it. Whatever it finds is credited to you in full, and the only charge is a flat fee when you move money out. This post announced the closed beta in September 2026; the current state of the product is at dona.3sb.io.
The detail
Where the money goes, and how Dona gets it back
The full post is in the PDF above. These are the parts worth pulling up on their own.