GiftCard Partners Blog

Your Scrip purchase decision makers use a wide variety of gift card brands for their participants. Whether they are fundraising or using gift cards for budgeting purposes; they want brands that they shop for on a regular basis. Here are the top 10 reasons why The Children's Place (TCP) is a perfect Scrip choice.

GiftCard Partners recently reported that the
2011 Gift Card IQ Survey reveals good news for retailers & merchants when it comes to “bigger” incentive gift card budgets. Retailers and merchants may be celebrating an increased use of gift cards when other consumer spending categories have slowed, but the Corporate Gift Card IQ Report also announces good news for employers who use gift cards as incentives and for those who wish to use them. Some interesting information was uncovered in Incentive's September report, which outlined the respondents' a couple personal questions and it revealed more data.

It should be no surprise that in a tough economy consumers are finally using those gift cards that are stored in their kitchen drawer (OK, that’s me), in their wallet or left on their  work-desk for a while. FirstData reported last week that closed loop gift cards (those specific a particular brand vs. credit branded) are in fact being used more due to higher prices for core consumer products. “Armed with this in-depth analysis and actual industry data provided by the 2011 Prepaid Midyear Card Performance Update, executives will have the necessary context and perspective to make better business decisions about their prepaid programs.” Gift card buyers are now also armed with what the general public wishes to consume – gift cards.
Read the report, First Data’s Executive Summary: 2011 Prepaid Midyear Gift Card Performance Update      

With all the hub bub about prepaid technologies like mobile wallets, mCerts and virtual gift cards, Ben Jackson from Mercator Advisory Group, offers us his calming and factual perspective in
“The future form of closed-loop gift cards – Reports of plastic’s demise are greatly exaggerated”. Ben examines 3 great lessons of history to temper the overstated destiny of plastic gift cards and advises “that new technologies do not always completely distance old ones”. The history lessons offer great perspective that “There will always be a place for plastic, but (the) day will soon arrive where virtual cards and mobile cards will be a necessary part of every issuer’s prepaid strategy. The task for issuers is to figure out what needs each form factor fills and tailor their program to make each work towards the best results”, states Jackson. This is great advice for issuers, retailers and merchants as they look to grow their businesses with diversity versus alienating parties via the next big technology.

The Prepaid Press recently published
Employers Find Ways to Say ‘Thank You’ to Employees; Prepaid cards Increasing as Incentive of Choice which highlighted Young America’s recent research regarding prepaid cards (such as gift cards) gaining even more popularity amongst corporate HR incentive programs. With company-wide salary freezes and abandoned bonuses, employers are struggling more than ever to retain their best employees. “…employers who want to retain their best employees admit they have fewer resources to do so, and many are turning to structured incentive programs, which cost less than salary increases and often result in high levels of employee productivity, positive feedback and loyalty," said Joe Custer, president of Young America. A few highlights of the survey findings: