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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report – North American PaymentsInsights: Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels
Gift Card Purchase Behavior Is Surprisingly Resilient in 2020:
- 65% of consumers purchased gift cards directly from a retailer in-store in 2020, up from 61% in 2019.
- 40% of consumers purchased gift cards directly from a retailer’s own website in 2020, up from 36% in 2019.
- Purchasing gift cards from a card display at another retailer declined from 49% of consumers in 2019 to 42% of consumers in 2020.
- The popularity of acquiring gift cards through social media websites, coin counting machines, fundraising efforts, gift card exchange, and tax preparation companies all increased in 2020.
- In-store card displays remain the most popular channel (57% of consumers) in 2020, down from 62% in 2019.
- There’s been a slight decline in consumers buying reloadable gift cards from a display at another retailer.
- Supermarket, grocery stores, and mass merchandisers remain the top distribution channels for prepaid cards of all varieties.
About Report
Mercator Advisory Group’s most recent Insight Summary Report, Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels, from the bi-annual North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series reveals continued growth of reloadable cards in the United States. Furthermore, the purchase channels for many types of prepaid cards (closed-loop gift, open-loop gift, open-loop reloadable, gaming, phone and transit) are also shifting, particularly in the area of online purchasing.
Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels, the latest Insight Summary Report from Mercator Advisory Group’s Primary Data Service, is based on a sample of 3,001 U.S. adults surveyed in the annual online Payments survey of Mercator’s North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series, conducted in June 2020.
The study highlights consumers’ use and interest in prepaid cards and, in particular, store cards, general purpose (or open-loop) cards and general purpose reloadable cards. The report explores where consumers buy and redeem prepaid cards, whether the cards are purchased for themselves or as gifts, how the cards are used, sources of funds for the cards, and other key aspects of prepaid cards in consumers’ lives.
“The prepaid market is changing with neo and challenger banks, use of reloadable prepaid cards, and more governments and corporations issuing prepaid cards instead of checks for disbursements of all types. That said, the use of gift cards continues to be strong, particularly online,” stated the author of the report, Peter Reville, director of Primary Data Services at Mercator Advisory Group, which includes the North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series.