Want to give the people on your nice list a greeting card and a gift card this holiday season? Now you can do so with a single purchase. Hallmark’s newly announced line of Gift Card Greetings provides a QR code for a prepaid gift card contained within a greeting card.
The offering is a collaboration with gift card specialist InComm Payments, which is handling the technology behind the card through its e-commerce platform, the Gift Card Shop. Analysts see it as a well-suited partnership between two industry leaders.
“This is a simple and logical partnership of leading providers in each space,” said Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research. “With both markets moving closer to a digital-physical equilibrium, it has become important to maximize the opportunity to reach gift-givers in the medium in which they intend to deliver both gifts and messaging.”
The digital gift cards are available for use at more than 100 retailers, including Starbucks and Nordstrom. The inside of the card contains a QR code that works for the gift giver and the recipient. Those who are giving the cards will be able to scan the QR code, select the retailer they want the gift card for, then select the amount they want loaded onto the gift card.
Once the recipient receives the card, they scan the same QR code to get access to the digital gift card. After they scan the code, they will need to input a four-digit code that’s on the inside of the card.
A Longstanding Relationship
The connections between InComm and Hallmark extend back several years. In 2019, InComm acquired Hallmark Business Connections, the business-to-business incentives subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. Hallmark Business Connections provides integrated, personalized solutions for organizations to boost employee engagement through incentive programs built around physical and digital gift cards.
This isn’t the first time Hallmark has grafted a payments product onto its cards. Last year, Hallmark teamed up with Venmo to allow consumers to send money securely with a greeting card. The idea was to bridge the gap between older generations who prefer to give cash gifts in physical greeting cards and the younger generations now accustomed to receiving everything, including cash, digitally. Gift Card Greetings represents a further, easier-to-use extension of that strategy.
