The Cabinet has approved a bill to give a five year expiry date to gift vouchers.
It would also see a ban on the requirement for vouchers to be spent in one transaction - while charges where a person's name is incorrectly registered would also be removed.
The Consumer Protection (Gift Vouchers) Bill has received cross-party support.
Currently, there is no regulation of expiry dates for gift vouchers.
Retailers are free to determine the expiry dates of their gift vouchers, with some expiring after as little as six months.
Business Minister Heather Humphreys said: "By having a set five-year expiry date on all gift vouchers, we will provide certainty to everyone involved.
"This has been a real bugbear for people for many years and, of course, it's particularly relevant now in the run up to Christmas when many of us will buy gift vouchers for family and friends."
She hopes the bill will be in place early in the new year.
The minister had also sought to deal with the issue of fees for the replacement of gift vouchers and for 'inactive balances', commonly known as maintenance fees.
But a number of legal issues on foot of advice from the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Parliamentary Council were presented.
The minister said rather than delay the bill, she decided to progress it without this provision.
The other provisions - in relation to requiring a gift voucher to be spent in a single transaction and charges for changing a name - were highlighted during a recent public consultation on gift vouchers.
Minister Humphreys added: "It's wrong that consumers should have to spend a voucher in full in one transaction. Similarly, it isn't fair that businesses can penalise consumers simply because of a wrong letter in a name.
"I'm glad that these two issues were brought to my attention during the public consultation so that we can now address them as part of this bill."
Research undertaken by the National Consumer Agency in 2013 found that almost half of those surveyed had let a gift voucher expire at some point without using it.
