Choosing a gift or a reward for 1 person can be hard, choosing for a large group of people you don’t necessarily know – of different ages, genders, personality and tastes – can be a nightmare!

This is probably the single biggest factor driving the growth and popularity of store gift cards, visa gift cards, mastercard gift cards and eftpos gift cards.
Sometimes when purchasing gift cards there is confusion about where the cards can be used; in multiple outlets, such as the case with eftpos gift cards, and those that can only be used within certain businesses such as store gift cards – like, as an example, a  Coles Myer Gift Card.
Gift Cards can broadly speaking be divided into 2 categories, “Open Loop” and “Closed Loop”
Closed Loop Gift Cards
The most common gift cards operate on a ‘closed loop’ system – this means they can only be redeemed within a specific store or group- such as Coles, Target, David Jones or Myer – or perhaps for a specific experience – as with Red Balloon or Village Cinemas. So, store gift cards can be categorised as “closed loop” as they can not be redeemed outside the loop.
From a branding perspective, closed loop store gift cards are great for the store issuing the cards but if you wish to reward someone as a business, this doesn’t help promote your branding at all!. Even with a store gift card for a retailer with a big product range and multiple outlets, you can still never really be sure your recipient will be able to use their gift card to reward themselves with something they really want.
Open Loop Gift Cards
‘Open loop’ gift cards, on the other hand, are not restricted to being used within just 1 business or group. Unlike store gift cards, these cards can be redeemed across more than one financial group. Open loop gift cards may be supported by eftpos, Visa and Mastercard.
An eftpos gift card program is easy and cost effective to establish and has the flexibility to support large and small programs. Your recipients can redeem their reward in any outlet that accepts eftpos – over 300,000 venues nationally.And, with an eftpos gift card as opposed to a store gift card, recipients can also treat themselves or a loved one to dinner or the movies or any other experience,

You can also choose to have your own branded gift cards so that, unlike with store cards, its your brand gets seen and reinforced everytime your recipient uses their gift card. You can even purchase your corporate gift cards “unloaded” to support your Direct Marketing or other incentive programs.

Contact us if you would like to find out more!