Gift card reuse statistics?

[mysticcoffee]

I'm currently using a paper gift card with spreasheet for tracking. I want to use Square gift cards, but most of my customers want to buy $5 cards and the best price I can get is $1/card from Square which is 20% not including the card transaction fee. That's a bit steep for me. But if cards are reused, that helps a bit of the pain. Anyone have any stats on their own card reuse? Thanks!

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

I don't have huge statistics as we just started using Square gift cards last season.  One thing to note is that when a card is emptied the customer leaves it as it has no value and now it can be loaded again, so it's not just reloading for the same customer but it's reloading all cards that you have.  I have reused (or have in my possesion to reissue) a dozen out of the 30 I used last year, the other 18 are still cards with balances, so in this case, I have a 100% reusability on the cards.  Sure some people may never bring the card back but then you are also keeping the balance that is on that card so it should be a net gain.

[Tom]

Hey @mysticcoffee, welcome and thanks for surfacing this.

We don't have additional gift card reporting available that would include a way to track how much they cost to use. I can certainly see how this would help you make more informed decisions for your business so I'll be forwarding your post to our Product Liaison team.

For now, hopefully @VanKalkerFarms's insight helps. Appreciate your patience, and please let us know if anything else comes up. 🙂

[mysticcoffee]

An update on this question: An institutional customer was an angel for me! They ordered a huge number of gift cards to use as a thank you for participants in a survey they were doing. Their order essentially payed for the gift cards that I bought at the $1/ea price. So I had enough for their order plus a huge number of cards left over for future use. I'm finding that I can get almost 100% reusability if the card is used at all. A lot of the cards are used and used again since I use them not only as a gift card but as a rewards card for regular customers who want to preload it with a large amount for a discount (load $20 or more on the card and pay only 95% of the value). After three years, I've probably only used less than 20% of the cards that I originally ordered since they keep getting reused. I figure I have a nearly lifetime supply of them.