Let's talk About E-Gift Cards

Today so many businesses are investing in advanced point of sale software. Now they can offer their customers E-Gifts cards (EGC). This alternative is an easy and ecologically thoughtful way to give someone a gift card rather than the traditional plastic gift cards (PGC).

An EGC is obviously not a physical card at all. It is an electronic transaction card that you keep on your smartphone. There it is holding a monetary gift / balance that can be used in the future for the business it is associated with. It is essentially a personal electronic debit card that someone has gifted you for your own personal use.

Pros and Cons of E-Gift Cards vs Plastic Gift Cards

Traditional Plastic Gift Cards

Pros

•  Can be materially given as a gift.
• Come in many colors and can be visually appealing.
• Easy to purchase. Sold in many other places besides the business that they are valid for. Ex. Grocery and dept. stores
• Easily included inside a special occasion card for you give to someone.

Cons

• Have to remember to keep it with you.
• Can become lost or misplaced and remains unused.
• Keeping track of the remaining balance may not be easy.
• The stripe on it may become damaged and possibly rendering it useless.
• Once used up it will likely go in the trash / landfill.
• They can eventually become a bulky nuisance and just another plastic card in your life you need to manage, keep track of and store somewhere.
  

E-Gift Cards

Pros

• Can be given to anyone that has a smartphone number or an email address.
• Can be bought online quickly.
• You can custom tailor your own personal message that can be read by the receiver.
• You can schedule a future delivery date and time to give it to someone.
• The receiver keeps it easily on their smartphone. Usually placed in their wallet app.
• Always available for use as long as you have your phone with you.
• Your balance remaining can be accessed anytime like on our website.
• Instant notification informing the sender of when the card is opened and received.
• The gift card balance can be transferred to another card for someone else's to use.

Cons

• Confusion, lack of understanding or trust on how EGC’s can be bought, given and used.
• Maybe not as personal as giving an PGC in person to someone although you could manage the delivery time to coincide with the event you are attending?
• No access to an online purchase portal to buy one.
• PGC’s rule the planet! Old habits die hard?
  

 My Thai Kitchen E-Gift Card Walkthrough

When someone visits our website at www.eatatmythaikitchen.com you will see in our menu "Gift Cards"

When you click on "Buy Gift Cards" you will be taken to where you then fill out some information decide the value you want the card to have. Here you can control the delivery method (email or text to phone number-recommended) and pick a date and time to send it. Importantly there is a field where you can compose a personal message to send to the lucky receiver!

From left to right the images above show an opened E-Gift card and the ability to save it to your wallet. There it remains with your other valuable passes and cards. No plastic here! Finally, to use the My Thai Kitchen E-Gift card, you merely open your wallet app and let the server scan the QR code. This will automatically credit any available funds on the card towards your check. It's so easy.

In Summary

Plastic gift cards have been a way of gift giving for a long time and they remain as popular as ever.

There is a personal gratification we enjoy when we buy a plastic gift card and give it to someone. It represents something that we went shopping for and picked it out. It is something material that we can look at and hold in our hand.

But E-Gift cards are obviously not that way and maybe it's time to consider them? But what is holding you back?

Is it that EGC's are stored electronically and not something that you can materially hold in your hand? Or is it because that they are not easily understood on how they work or can be bought?  Maybe some of these factors are what are holding back the public's confidence and acceptance of them?   

In the future plastic gift cards may go away. This could be due to the growing environmental concerns over plastic waste and the impact they have on our environment. In spite of offering EGC's here at MTK we still sell PGC's. We think that this will likely go on for a long time.  We sometimes find it hard to convince customers to go the EGC way.

At My Thai Kitchen we try to do many things operationally to be more socially responsible. We are hoping that more businesses and customers will someday adapt to E-Gift Cards. It's very easy and actually fun to do. So just think for a moment, do you really need to carry around another piece of plastic when you could easily placed it electronically in your smartphone? E-Gift Cards are not yet outselling PGC's but every year their popularity is growing and we support that trend! We hope this blog post will be informative to those who may want to give it a try.