It would be a suboptimal UX potentially (vs live funds on a physical gift card), but Apple could tie the gift card to an Apple ID at purchase with a QR code or something similar, and then permit gifting through the existing Apple ecosystem primitives. Apple could then enforce stronger controls as the value is transferred internally on their internal ledger. In financial services, its all about tradeoffs.
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905889 - January 2024
($day_job is financial services, a component of my work is fraud mitigation)
I remember that article. It's wild the extent to which "anti-fraud" has captured companies, destroyed their UX, and seemingly directs all their actions. And when you criticize it, they blame KYC/AML and cry and act as though they have no agency. A very small tail is wagging the dog!