Check-ins: Beyond the Discount or My thoughts on why the Gift Card market is prime for a major disrupt (torn on which was the better title)
I had shared my thoughts in the past about gift cards and received a fairly discerning response on twitter about why the plastic card market is here to stay - 80% of all gift cards go unclaimed. Meaning it is essentially free money for the vendor, so why would the vendor want to change it. Now the government has stepped in recently to stop dishonest practices like expiry dates… surely the money used to purchase the cards didn’t expire, so why should the card? After a couple of conversations with some guys at GroupCard, I found more and more ways this old concept could be flipped on its head. Here are some of the high level problems/solutions that I was able to see:
1) I am a minimalist and refuse to carry anything more than the essentials: There is no need to carry around a $25 credit card for a restaurant everywhere I go, but you know the moment I take it out of my wallet, I will end up there without it.
2) What is left on the card should never be a mystery:By either app basing the gift card, or even email - handling the card in electronic format can provide the ability to let you know how much is remaining: One option is that if an app barcode for Barnes & Nobles gets scanned for a purchase, the dollar amount next to the barcode changes to represent the remaining value. Email could also be sent to the users account for security and budget tracking as well. a la Square style.
3) Even if I have a card for a place, I may forget: When I check-in, allow the ability to notify the user that they have an outstanding balance on a gift card at that location. Linking this service to APIs offered by Facebook (Places),foursquare, SCVNGR, Gowalla, & Google Places would allow the service to jump in to allow the user to take advantage of their gift.
UPDATE: or, if tabbing/swiping with Square would already register the Gift Card as an option for payment.
Additionally, when I started to look at the use cases of the Gift Card, many similarities in the solution could be leveraged for coupons and much anything else, as well - The basic key: let me know when I can use these (Gift Cards/ Coupons/etc), where I can use them. This topic has been filling up page after page of my moleskin on all the potential beyond the deals… what else do we want to know about a place upon entering? is my flight on time? what ski lifts are open? etc… API’s can offer where I walked in, what about all the other angles that are out there rather than just relying on what relationships the specific check-in app has created. Groupon has a 30% off coupon here, foursquare offers 10% on checkin, etc.
4) Gift cards without borders:If a parent wants to give their child a gift card for a grocery store while they are away at college (to ensure the money doesn’t end up on a bar tab) they should be allowed to not be limited by stores that are in both the parent and the childs region. There are no Safeway or Publix in Milwaukee, but the child may have only them as options. This is a stone age hurdle, and we can fix this.
5) Land fills and the costs of a tangible card (press, delivers, ink, etc)= all unnecessary waste. Lets disrupt pixels instead of our carbon footprint.
