Online Gift Cards

[Ahkamden]

What are the Pros/Cons of offering an online only gift card? In that no physical card would be issued, customer would print/email gift card to recipient. You could still call up and use the Gift Card for phone orders and online. It would be modeled somewhat how Amazon does their 3 different options for a gift card. Without the option to have a physical card mailed to you.

I see this as having less overhead since there is no need to have an inventory of cards with the same benefits.

[vincevincevince]

Pro:
- People will lose the code emails (you pocket the cash)
- Ideal late gift (even purchasable same day!)

Con:
- People will bug you to rediscover lost codes
- No physical card to present to recipient

[thorsten iceland]

Ahkamden wrote:

What are the Pros/Cons of offering an online only gift card?

Good points there from vincevincevince.

The only thing that springs to mind is that many US gift card issuers restrict these types cards for use with US merchants only (e.g. you will get an E-62 Decline "Restricted card" due to the country exclusion if tried with a non-US merchant).

Also some online merchants really don't like these cards and block them by BIN, but of course it depends where your customers are and what they will buy.

[vincevincevince]

I wonder if Ahkamden referred to a VISA-type prepaid gift card or one just for his store (homespun). Would be interesting to know.

[Ahkamden]

For our company I'm thinking a store only not Visa. And great points on the pros and cons.

Part of the reason I'm thinking no physical gift-cards is then implementation should be much easier since it's just a piece of code tying it to the amount of money and no need to worry about having stocking cards and having them either be scan able or numbers pre-printed. Guess I should point out that we are mainly mail-order/internet, with a few physical locations but everything ships from warehouse. Which is why I think we could pull off no physical cards.