A guide to gift card expiry dates
28/10/2020
There’s nothing worse than the sinking feeling of finding a gift card at the bottom of a drawer or in the back of your wallet and then realising it has expired. Let’s hope Aunty Jan doesn’t ask about the non-existent holiday I took with the expired Jetstar gift card… Up until very recently, most gift cards sold in Australia had 12 months expiry from the date of purchase or activation. There were some brands/retailers that gave customers a little bit longer, but there weren’t many. The expiry laws varied from state to state, but New South Wales was the first to introduce a minimum of 3 years expiry in late 2017, with South Australia following shortly after in 2018.
e-gift it is changing the way you send gifts
28/10/2020
The gift card industry in Australia is worth many billions of dollars, and it’s only getting larger every year. We can see this with the choice of EFTPOS instead of cash, email instead of postal mail, and music streaming instead of CD's, just to name a few. In line with these trends, we are also starting to see consumers purchase digital gift cards instead of physical gift cards.
Digital gift cards proving extremely popular through COVID-19
28/10/2020
The way we shop has changed dramatically since most of Australia (and the world) was forced into some sort of lockdown. Confined to our homes for most hours of the day saw the amount of time we spent online increase to levels not seen before. With restrictions imposed on traditional bricks-and-mortar shopping, many retailers had to ensure their online presence was just as strong as their physical presence. A [recent report by We Are Social and Hootsuite found that in April 2020 alone, more than 200,000 Australians shopped online for the first time. In addition to this, online purchases were up 6.8% in April 2020. The Easter online sales proved even more popular than Cyber Monday in 2019.