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The scams work by getting the victim to send the codes to the scammer. They don’t care about the physical cards.

Wait, how would this stop phone scams?

Nothing can stop that. The goal is lowering the victims / profit. How to do that, that's the question. It comes to no surprise to me poor countries (with bribed police force) try to scam rich ones.

How would this affect the profits?

Gift cards don’t have a value until you purchase them, the package is meaningless. The barcode is scanned and the value is added when the transaction is completed.

They already do? Usually I see gift cards packaged in a sealed paper envelope that and the redemption code itself is covered up with tamper evident paint.