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 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.

Home is a place where social objects add value over novelty.

After reading about Social Objects and how they have not quite come into focus, I couldn’t stop thinking about the potential for inanimate objects to talk, have a history, or contain data. It became pretty clear (especially as being a fairly new home owner) that there would be a huge advantage if your homes appliances and components could talk - and not in the conventional use-case of your refrigerator letting you know when the milk is bad.

How about when your furnace needs maintenance, water heater needs scheduled service, air filter needs replacement? With a database handling details about the device, time stamping and alerts - You now can be notified of warranties, end of lifecycle, link to user manuals (could have come in handy when trying to find the oil holes on my furnace), repair history, etc.

This can all be done quite easily with a Stickbits type barcode that links, not to a little web note, but a little more of a robust database (but not overly complex). This way emails can remind you that the air filter has been in for 2 months, roof should be inspected, etc. This would be very handy when purchasing a new house as well - scan the barcodes and now you know exactly what state all your appliances are in the house (e.g. the water heater has about 2 years left).

Facebook’s changes aren’t going away and they continue to infringe on privacy (Read 10 reasons to to quit Facebook), enter Diaspora, who is looking to build a web service that gives you your own social site, yours to set privacy, your content, just yours. I have financially backed them and look forward to this shift in the way that we socially network.

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