GiftCard Partners Blog

We're excited to share our first post of Tom's Takeaways. The B2B gift card industry is constantly evolving and we want a place to share what our company learns from attending conferences and shows, studying recent reports and surveys, and to give you a pulse on what’s to come in 2019 based on the conversations we’ve had with other industry players.

Are you a retailer or merchant looking for the latest information on FinCEN’s final rule? Wayne Chatham, CEO of Card Compliant will be educating retailers, restaurants, merchants, and other card issuers on potential compliance solutions and exemptions to FinCEN’s requirements via a 1 hour webinar on February 29, 2012 at 1pm CT. “We are especially interested in having retailers and restaurants participate in the webinar as this may be the first time many have faced compliance issues generated by FinCEN,” states Chuck Rouse, Card Compliant’s Chairman.  “Among other topics, we will address FinCEN, the FinCEN rule on prepaid access, the closed-loop exemption to the rule, the $2,000 closed-loop value requirement, and the $10,000 seller requirement.” Join in on this learning and sharing session and register for the webinar at no cost: 
Are Your Pre-paid, Closed Loop Gift Cards FinCEN Compliant?  http://www.cardcompliant.com/FinCENwebinar.aspx
Source:
gnom.es national newswire

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. Source:
Payments Journal, Mercator Perspectives      

A new study by the Obama administration caught our attention; among other important statistics, it states that females earn about 75% of what their male counterparts make. Although employers “need to treat men and women equally”, when it comes to compensation, it’s just not going to happen overnight. However, handling employee engagement, recognition, incentives and rewards in a way that is engaging to women…MIGHT be keeping you up at night. Recognizing performance differently for women than men is a sticky topic, but employers do need to provide incentives and rewards that are relevant to women and which speak directly to their likes, needs, and wishes. An example of this is to buy gift cards in bulk and offer card brands that catch the attention of the woman, the mom, the professional (see below).

Excerpt from Engagement Strategies Magazine:
Gift Card Landscape Has Shifted, Bringing New Vistas, Values
Four industry experts discuss how recent changes in the market are affecting the use of gift cards as a motivational tool
Gift Card Trends What other important trends are we likely to see in the use of gift cards over the near term? The experts we spoke to had some different views and suggested different opportunities, but all agreed that the use of gift cards as incentives and performance and recognition rewards will continue to grow. NGC’s Adam Van Witzenburg expects to see more use of gift cards – especially virtual cards – as incentives to get customers to come into stores or to come to the phone – “things like, ‘If you come in, we’ll turn this card on,’ and ‘If you take this survey, you can have this card’ more proactive marketing with the cards.” For the rest of the article:
http://www.engagementstrategiesonline.com/Gift-Card-Landscape-Has-Shifted-Bringing-New-Vistas-Values.1014.0.html