news ANALYSIS

Nets and Gifted team up to develop digital instant prepaid gift card

20 Apr 2021

P

ayment services provider Nets and gift card provider Gifted are teaming up to offer a digital instant prepaid gift card.

Initially, the digital solution will be available across the Nordics, as well as to merchants in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux and France.

The solution enables instant issuing of single-use gift cards to offer a frictionless user experience for consumers. So much so, that consumers will receive a fully usable gift card within seconds.

Nets forecasts that the global gift card market will grow approximately 12% over the next five years to total €900bn by 2024.

Gifted offers the market a prepaid gift card solution. Meantime, Nets will provide the company with Account Management Services. This includes prepaid cards and transaction processing services and Lifecycle Management Services. These include virtual cards that can be instantly issued to the wallet. The solution is fully digitised with no physical cards required, enabling Gifted to issue cards virtually.

Merchants will benefit from digital gift cards that integrate seamlessly into their regular payments flow. For customers, the experience is very similar to any digitally issued payment card.

Nets’ announcement comes after the gift card sector experienced steady growth in 2020 despite Covid-19. According to the Gift Card & Vouchers Association (GCVA), the sector witnessed an overall rolling year growth of 4.6%.

Further GCVA research also suggests that gift cards could help retailers recover from the pandemic – 65% of shoppers say they have been introduced to a new brand or organisation after receiving a gift card for that business, up from 59% in 2019.

In addition, 96% of respondents spend up to an extra £50 when redeeming their gift cards, providing major revenue for retailers.