Gift cards a big opportunity for UK retailers

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Gift cards a big opportunity for UK retailers.

Gift cards are often thought of as an expensive investment limited to top tier retailers, but its time to think again. By adopting an outsourced gift card solution, retailers of all sizes have every opportunity to understand their customer base even better.

Retailers can now invest in online merchant gift card solutions, which enable any merchant to issue, load and accept closedloop gift card payments within their retail environment. Most importantly for businesses, these require little capital investment and low ongoing service costs so the opportunity is there to be taken.

Knowing the customer

As a small business you may think you know your customers but do you know their spending habits. Imagine having the ability to assess the shopping patterns of your customers so you can target them with special offers and promotions. By implementing your own gift card scheme, you could see your business transformed.

In the current economic environment retailers need to work to deliver the best shopping experience possible to customers. Retention of business is more important now than ever and gift cards provide a means to getting customers coming back and help them build brand loyalty. The cards have a higher perceived value than paper vouchers or cash incentives, which help foster improved customer loyalty. The gifts can also help improve increased store footfall and in turn increase impulse purchasing.

This investment can also give you the chance to interact with customers in a completely new way and build an even better relationship. Giving regular shoppers the opportunity to top-up balances online or transfer from one card to another gives you the chance to increase your customers spending power exponentially and take your customer service experience to the next level.

Cards can also be custom-branded to reinforce retail brand awareness and can be integrated with their loyalty programmes. This means the overall result is also likely to be a much higher return on investment than paper-based schemes.

Safe in the knowledge

By investing in a low cost gift card solution there are also additional security benefits. For example, a gift card is only worth the price of the plastic until an amount has been loaded onto an online card account. This also means that the product can be marketed anywhere within a store without them being a security risk, which is not the case with cash equivalent paper vouchers. Also, if a customer decides to register their card on the website, if it is lost or stolen, then unlike a paper voucher, a new card with the same value can be issued. Gift cards can also reduce the problems of staff theft, which was often a common problem with paper vouchers for the business.

Retailers can also opt for a managed electronic gift scheme. This will then ensure that gift card payments are processed in the same way as any other payment card at the EPOS, it also has the additional benefit of delivering real-time information on customer purchasing. Likewise the cost of gift card compared to credit and debit card processing charges are significantly lower but will also mean lower cost of operations.

Also you do not want disparate systems for the retail store systems and gift cards systems. By adopting an integrated solution it provides one system to manage all the transactions. The introduction of an integrated gift card solution will also support any planned multi-channel payment expansions. By supporting payment at the EPOS, at kiosks and over the internet means that gift cards can be used in all areas of the retail operation to perform sales transactions.

The current economic climate means outsourcing gift card management is an ideal way to keep costs low, while allowing retailers to deliver an even better service to their customers.

About YESpay

YESpay is a global payments services company providing highly secure and scalable EMV Chip & PIN, contactless and magnetic credit / debit card, e-commerce and gift card payment processing services to independent and multi-chain merchants. It provides outsourced management payment services anywhere in the world to traditional high street stores, hospitality, leisure, fuel, mail order and web environments.

Through EMBOSS, its Gateway to Managed Payment Services, merchants can quickly accept integrated card payments within their EPOS tills, kiosks, and hospitality payment systems as well as enhance their websites for on-line payments with minimal capital investment and low on-going services costs. EMBOSS is an on-line IP-based payment processing service that has been pre-accredited (generically) by major card Acquirers in Europe and North America (including Barclaycard Business, HSBC, HBOS, Lloyds Cardnet, Streamline, Ulster Bank, Elavon, PBS, Amex and Diners). In addition, YESpays EMBOSS service is fully end to end certified to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) Level 1 as mandated by Visa and MasterCard.

YESpays EasyV-Suite of card payment products are innovative and cost-effective solutions for EPOS, Kiosk, Hospitality, Mobile and Internet Websites that combine with the YESpay hosted EMBOSS payment service to enable their merchants to perform credit or debit card payments in both card-present and card-not-present environments.