GiftCard Partners Blog

Although created in 1994 by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave; We’re starting to see these vehicles quite often now, QR Codes (quick response). They deliver a message, coupon, gift card, or transport someone directly to a website via an embedded link in the code. They connect the print or physical advertising world to the mobile and online realm.

This post might look familiar to you; we've added an update further down the page. Wikipedia outlines a “Virtual Wallet” as a hybrid checking/savings account with 3 components: a "Spend" account (checking), a "Reserve" account (backup checking, incurs interest), and a"Growth" account (savings). This is a pretty narrow view of a virtual wallet (note to self, update Wikipedia). Virtual wallets are cropping up not just from banks for online banking; they are being offered by credit card companies, SmartPhone providers, and there are even free versions that stores, manages, and organizes digital versions of store membership cards, coupons, loyalty cards, virtual gift cards, or any other piece of information that you store in your traditional wallet. Windows even offers a PC software version of a virtual wallet, but it’s more focused on protecting all those passwords, account numbers, and access codes vs. making purchases and using your loyalty rewards points or gift cards.
GiftCard Partners feels the Virtual Wallet that will not only change our way of shopping, paying, and redeeming, but will also combine the best of the above types and allow us to:

My father-in-law just turned 80! What did we give him for his birthday? An iPhone…well, pretty much...it’s complicated. Turns out you can’t buy a phone for someone due to contracts, phone number transitions, etc. So we printed a picture of an iPhone and gave him gift cards to buy his phone. What’s my point? He is 80 and he still loves his gadgets. Now, Dads love their gadgets within gadgets, like virtual and mobile gift cards.  “Most Dads love their gadgets and now family members can give unique virtual or mobile gift cards with personalized messages that stay with them on their mobile device,” said Doug Schneider, CEO, Transaction Wireless. “Social gifting is gaining in popularity and Facebook postings give loved ones a public forum to express their feelings and appreciation for dad.” Employers can embrace holidays like Father’s Day and make a Dad feel special with spot rewards and gifting virtual and mobile gift cards. High performance, corporate recognition, safety, sales motivation and achievements…there are many ways to commemorate your employees’ fatherhood.

At GiftCard Partners, we follow gift card technology closely and we’ve been doing some trend reporting on e-Gift cards (aka eCerts & virtual gift cards), mobile Gift cards (aka mCerts), and their place in
virtual wallets (see last week’s post:
Virtual Wallets: What are they…Really?). These technologies affect our clients (retailers) as they navigate through their adoption of technology across their retail locations, ecommerce sites, and in their B2B or bulk gift card business. It also affects our customers, as they receive their cards and deliver them to their end user differently. The end users, who receive the cards as part of workplace incentive programs or loyalty rewards, receive their cards fast and can use them with optimal convenience.  Here, let’s take notice of yet another party that benefits from this technology…Mother Earth. In E-Gift Cards Pushing Out Plastic Credit, Earth911 highlights that implementing e-Gift card technology reduces the industry’s carbon footprint and “spares natural resources by offering retail credit via online delivery”. Decomposition resistant plastic card resins, laminates, inks & dyes combined with packaging and fuel for shipping…all are eliminated by technologists and the retail industries’ movement to Go Green with gift cards. Also consider that gift cards are just a tiny slice of the overall plastic and paper pie, if you add up all the payment methods that could eventually reside in a virtual wallet. Although consumer purchased gift cards were the first to go “e”, we are also seeing a strong migration in the more complicated to fulfill and distribute, B2B market. More than ½ of our clients already offer technology based gift cards and another ¼ of them are in the process now. As more retailers adopt non-plastic gift card methods, companies like
CashStarTM,
RevTrax® and
Transaction WirelessTM lead the way to provide critical pieces to make B2B bulk corporate gift cards widely available. Until our wallets are all virtual, encourage your cards’ recipients to recycle their used gift cards here:

Visit Alison Neumer Lara's Earth911 article.

They are all top of mind for consumers. As you read through this feature, consider what this could all mean for the B2B gift card market via incentives and loyalty programs. How can these programs be enhanced by social media and consumer trends like group couponing? Move over Groupon, Mr. 50 million strong. Facebook’s 600 million users are offered-up some of your group couponing action. But, is there really room for another Groupon?

Business Insider’s Groupon survey suggests YES, as they start to see Groupon’s regular users become less active over time…