Gift Cards
Merchants can offer their customers gift cards through a service that allows them to customize cards with their brand, issue cards at the point of sale (POS), reload cards, and process gift card payments. The solution may also allow gift cards to double as loyalty rewards program cards or to send digital “eGift” cards.
Why It Matters to your customers
Gift cards continue to be the most requested gift item and popular, go-to option for corporate gifts, birthdays, and holiday shopping. They are also an option for consumers who don’t want to carry cash but don’t use credit cards. Consumers have the expectations that a merchant will offer gift cards, and they also expect the user experience to be simple, convenient, and seamless—whether using the card at the location where it was purchased, at another location, or online.
Gift cards are also a revenue-booster. They foster new or repeat business, and research shows that the majority of the time the gift card user spends more than face value of the card. Merchants can also use gift cards as a loyalty program reward that can bring traffic back to brick-and-mortar locations. Gift card sales are revenue first, inventory adjustment later, so they may give merchants some capital to use for an upcoming order or business investments.
Why Gift Cards is an Opportunity
Merchants of all sizes are adding gift cards to their offerings, so don’t discount SMBs as prospects. Any business may be looking for an upgraded solution that will result in an easier, hassle-free customer experience. A managed gift card service can provide security measures that help the merchant combat card fraud and may include a customer portal where gift card holders can check their balances.
Bundling gift cards with other merchant solutions can provide your customers with a valuable service while increasing recurring revenue and creating a sticker business relationship with you.
Gift Card Vendors
It’s important to note that the vendors listed below provide gift card functionality differently. For example, some are payment companies (green) that can process gift cards and offer a gift card program. The costs and potential recurring revenue will differ.
Other vendors are POS software companies that include gift card functionality with their software. Again, the costs and potential recurring revenue will differ as some may include gift cards with the standard cost of the system while others may charge additional fees.
Finally, there are those companies known to be stand-alone gift card, loyalty, and marketing solutions. The exact cost and potential recurring revenue will differ. These are noted below with an asterisk (*).
Regardless of how gift card programs are implemented, there will always be potential recurring revenue from the sale of gift card media itself.
In the near future we’ll be conducting a thorough comparison of these vendors to provide more clarity around which create additional recurring revenue streams and which provide the gift cards as a value-add.
- ACCEO Logivision
- Card Marketing Services*
- Chase Paymentech
- Clover
- Clutch*
- COCARD
- Como
- Datacap Systems
- eCard Systems*
- Elavon
- Electronic Payments
- eMobilePOS
- Equinox Payments
- EVO Payments
- First American Payment Systems
- First Data
- Focus POS
- FuturePOS
- Givex*
- Harbortouch
- Heartland Payment Systems
- Idealpos Solutions
- J3 POS
- Lavu
- Lightspeed
- MobileBytes
- NCC Reflection
- North American Bancard
- NorthStar
- Omnivore*
- Paradise POS
- Paytronix*
- POSBANK
- Posera
- POSitouch
- Restaurant Manager
- Revel Systems
- Rezku POS
- RPOWER
- Shift4 Payments
- ShopKeep
- SoftTouch
- The Customer Connection*
- Toast
- TouchBistro
- TSYS
- UpServe
- Vend
- Worldpay