Do salon gift cards expire in Canada? The rules, province by province

A client slides a slightly creased gift card across your front desk. It was bought three Decembers ago, it says $100, and somewhere under the ribbon design there is a line reading "valid 12 months". Do you have to honour it?

Almost everywhere in Canada, yes. Every province that has legislated on the question bans expiry dates on the dollar-value gift cards a salon sells, and most ban the dormancy fees that used to nibble balances down to zero. The printed expiry is simply void: the card is worth its remaining balance, whenever it shows up.

But "almost everywhere" and "dollar-value" are doing real work in those sentences. Gift card law in Canada is provincial, not federal, and a certificate for one specific service ("one balayage with Jess") plays by different rules than a $100 card in several provinces. This guide goes through it province by province, with the official sources, then covers the fees you may and may not charge, the GST and HST timing, and how to run cards cleanly at the desk.

Two honesty notes before we start. First, this blog belongs to ViteUneCoupe, a free online booking system for hair salons with 0% commission, and ViteUneCoupe has no gift card feature and processes no payments: your cards will live on paper, in a spreadsheet, or with your payment provider, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. Second, this article is orientation, not legal advice: the statutes change, and your provincial consumer protection office or a lawyer has the final word for your salon.

The short answer: your dollar-value card cannot expire

Across Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the pattern is remarkably consistent for a card your salon sells with a dollar amount on it:

• No expiry date. A printed expiry is unenforceable; the card keeps its value until it is used up.
• No dormancy or inactivity fees. You cannot shave the balance because the card sat in a drawer.
• Two fees are generally allowed: replacing a lost or stolen card, and customizing a card at the buyer's request.
• Promotional and free cards are different. A card the holder paid nothing for (a prize, a "free $20 bonus card") may carry an expiry in most provinces.

That national pattern is why generic "gift cards never expire in Canada" articles exist. What they skip, and what matters most to a hair salon, is the specific-service certificate exception a few sections down.

One scope note: if your salon is in Québec, the rules differ. Gift cards there fall under the Consumer Protection Act administered by the Office de la protection du consommateur, with its own fee and disclosure rules; see our French-language guide, Carte-cadeau en salon de coiffure au Québec. The rest of this article covers the other provinces.

The rules province by province

Everything in this table is about dollar-value cards sold for money by a single business like your salon. All sources were checked in October 2026.

A few footnotes that matter in practice:

• Shopping mall cards are the one dormancy exception. Ontario and New Brunswick allow multi-store mall cards to charge a monthly fee (up to $2.50 after 15 months of inactivity in both provinces' rules). Your salon's own card is not a mall card, so this never applies to you; it is only worth knowing because clients sometimes confuse the two.
• Prepaid Visa and Mastercard are federal territory, not provincial. Cards issued by federally regulated financial institutions follow rules overseen by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada: the funds on them do not expire either, but activation and maintenance fees are permitted (FCAC prepaid cards page, checked in October 2026). If a client pays with one, it is just a card payment; none of your gift card obligations are involved.
• Ontario has a new act waiting in the wings. The Consumer Protection Act, 2023 received royal assent in December 2023 but was not yet in force when we checked in October 2026; it keeps the no-expiry rule and states explicitly that it covers digital as well as physical cards. Until proclamation, the 2002 act and O. Reg. 17/05 remain the law.

The "one balayage" trap: certificates for a specific service

Here is the part written nowhere on the generic consumer pages, and it is the most salon-relevant rule in this whole area. Several provinces treat a certificate for one specific service with no dollar value on it ("one cut and blow-dry", "one full balayage with Jess") differently from a $100 card:

• Ontario allows an expiry date on a card sold for one specific service; the ontario.ca page's own example is a single-service appointment.
• British Columbia allows specific-service certificates to expire; it is dollar-value cards that cannot (Consumer Protection BC says so explicitly, haircuts included in their example).
• Alberta's Gift Card Regulation does not apply to service-specific cards with no cash value, so the no-expiry rule does not protect them.
• Manitoba allows expiry dates on cards sold for a specific good or service.
• New Brunswick allows an expiry on a card issued for a specific good or service.
• Saskatchewan's FCAA guidance lists expiry exceptions only for charitable cards and cards the holder paid nothing for, with no published carve-out for service certificates: the safe reading is that a paid "one haircut" certificate does not expire there, but confirm with the FCAA before relying on it.
• Nova Scotia's guidance bans expiry dates and does not publish a service-certificate carve-out like Ontario's or BC's; treat specific-service certificates as non-expiring there too unless your lawyer says otherwise.

Why would a salon care? Because a service certificate ages differently than money. The "$100" card is still $100 in three years; the "one balayage" certificate is a promise to deliver a service whose price will have moved twice by the time it surfaces. An expiry date on a service certificate, where legal, protects you from doing 2029's balayage at 2026's price.

Our advice is simpler, though: sell dollar-value cards and skip the problem entirely. A $150 card buys a balayage today; if your prices rise before it is redeemed, the client tops up the difference and nobody argues about what "one balayage" meant. You get one policy that is legal in every province, needs no per-province fine print, and survives every price increase. If you do sell service certificates in a province that allows expiry, print the date large, honest and generous (two or three years, not six months), and remember a certificate with an unenforceable expiry is still valid: the law voids the date, not the card.

Fees: what you may charge, and what you may not

The provincial pattern on fees is as consistent as the one on expiry:

In plain terms: the card the buyer paid $100 for must be worth $100 until it is spent. Most provinces also require the card's terms and conditions to be disclosed on the card or at the time of sale, so whatever rules you do set (how partial balances work, whether it covers retail products as well as services) belong printed on the card, not improvised at the desk.

Promotional and bonus cards play by different rules

Every province above distinguishes between a card someone bought and a card someone got for free: a raffle prize, a loyalty reward, or the "$20 bonus card" in a classic December promotion ("buy a $100 gift card, get a $20 bonus card"). Cards the holder gave no value for may generally carry an expiry date and are outside most of the protections.

That makes the bonus-card promo both legal and useful in Canada: the purchased $100 card cannot expire, while the free $20 bonus card can say "valid January through March" and pull a visit into your quietest months. Just keep the two cards physically separate and label the bonus card clearly as promotional with its window printed on it. Gift cards sold in the holiday window are one of the better levers for filling the new year, and they sit at the centre of both our guide to the holiday season rush in a Canadian hair salon, which covers selling them in December, and our guide to the January and February slow season, which covers getting them redeemed when the book goes quiet.

Running cards at the front desk without disputes

The law decides what you must honour; your process decides whether honouring it is painless. Nearly every gift card argument comes down to missing information, and the fix is a five-column log, on paper or in a spreadsheet:

The habits that make it work:

• Number every card and write the number on it. A numbered card can be voided and reissued if lost, which turns "sorry, nothing we can do" into a goodwill moment, and justifies the replacement fee if you charge one.
• Record partial redemptions immediately, on the card and in the log. "I thought there was $40 left" is the single most common dispute, and under the no-expiry rules that balance is live forever.
• One person owns the log. A log everyone updates "later" has holes exactly where the disputes are.
• Keep the data minimal. A first name and last initial matches a sale; a gift card ledger needs no phone numbers or addresses. What client data a Canadian salon should hold at all is covered in our guide to client records and privacy for Canadian hair salons.
• Honour the old and the awkward. The eight-year-old card, the certificate from the previous owner's era if you agreed to take on liabilities, the card with a void expiry printed on it: the $80 you "save" by refusing one costs more in reviews than it is worth, and refusing may simply be illegal.

If you sell digital gift cards through a payment provider or point-of-sale system, it will track balances for you, and the same provincial rules apply to what it sells on your behalf: check that its card settings have no expiry and no dormancy fees configured for Canada.

The money side: tax timing and the liability on your books

Two financial facts about gift cards surprise owners more than any legal rule.

GST/HST is charged at redemption, not at sale. Under section 181.2 of the Excise Tax Act, issuing or selling a gift certificate for consideration is deemed not to be a supply, so no GST or HST applies when the card is sold; the certificate is treated as money when it is redeemed, and tax applies then, based on what it buys (CRA policy P-202, gift certificates, checked in October 2026). Note for the PST provinces: the card's redemption revenue is still service revenue or retail revenue like any other, and the haircut-versus-shampoo distinction works exactly as usual; the mechanics are in our guide to GST, HST and PST for Canadian hair salons.

A sold card is a debt, not earnings. The $2,000 of cards you sell in December is $2,000 of services you owe, mostly in January and February, and your accountant will book it as a liability until redeemed. Do not spend December's card sales as December's profit. The no-expiry rules make this permanent: outstanding balances never quietly die, so they follow the business, including into a sale of the salon, where the buyer will want to know exactly how much card liability is outstanding; it is one of the due-diligence lines covered in our guide to selling a hair salon in Canada. That log from the previous section is also your liability ledger.

What about software? An honest note

Plenty of salon platforms sell gift card modules, usually tied to their payment processing, and if you already run your till through one, its gift card feature is worth a look: automatic balance tracking and online card sales are genuinely convenient.

ViteUneCoupe is not one of them, and we will not pretend otherwise: ViteUneCoupe has no gift card feature, takes no payments, and will not track your card balances. What it does is the other half of the job: the card recipient, who has often never sat in your chair, books her first visit on your free booking page, around the clock, with no commission to anyone, and lands in your client database with her visit history from day one. The free plan covers unlimited online bookings, your service catalogue with prices, per-stylist schedules and the calendar; the Standard plan, from 29 € per month excluding tax with no commitment (billed in euros, as we are a French company), adds email confirmations, reminders and thank-you messages plus calendar sync. Reminders are email only: there is no text messaging on any plan. That first gift card visit converting into a second, paid one is the whole game, and it is the subject of our guide to client retention and rebooking for Canadian hair salons.

The gift card itself stays on paper, in your spreadsheet, or with your payment provider. The two jobs are different, and neither tool needs to do both.

Frequently asked questions

Can a hair salon put an expiry date on gift cards in Canada?

Not on a dollar-value card in any province with gift card legislation: Ontario, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick all ban expiry dates on purchased gift cards, and a printed expiry is simply void. Certificates for one specific service, and free promotional cards, may carry an expiry in several provinces. Québec has its own separate regime.

Can a "one haircut" gift certificate expire?

In Ontario, BC, Alberta, Manitoba and New Brunswick, a certificate sold for one specific service with no dollar value may legally carry an expiry date. Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia publish no such carve-out, so treat service certificates as non-expiring there unless your provincial office confirms otherwise. The simpler policy is to sell dollar-value cards only.

Can I charge a fee if a gift card goes unused for years?

No. Dormancy and inactivity fees on a single-business gift card are banned in every province listed above. The fees generally allowed are replacing a lost or stolen card and customizing a card at purchase. The mall-card dormancy exception applies to multi-store cards only, never to your salon's own card.

Do I charge GST or HST when I sell a gift card?

No. Under section 181.2 of the Excise Tax Act, the sale of a gift certificate is deemed not to be a supply, so no GST/HST applies at the sale. The tax applies when the card is redeemed, based on what it pays for, at your province's usual rate.

Does ViteUneCoupe manage gift cards?

No. ViteUneCoupe has no gift card feature and processes no payments: cards live on paper, in a spreadsheet, or with your payment provider. ViteUneCoupe is the free online booking page, calendar and client database where the card recipient books her visit, with 0% commission permanently; the Standard plan from 29 € per month excluding tax adds email confirmations and reminders.