Welcome to part 12 of our 12 part series – Tell Me the Best Merchant Solution for My Business.” In this chapter of our series we will discuss the following questions: “Can I accept electronic gift cards? If so, why should I? What do I have to gain and lose by doing so?”
The first question you should ask yourself is should I accept electronic gift cards. The answer is that every retailer, restaurant, and ecommerce store should accept electronic gift cards. If you do not you are missing out on large profits. The next question is if you are not a retail, ecommerce, or restaurant merchant, should you accept electronic gift cards. Ask yourself this question, “is my product or service the type of product or service that people would like to receive as a gift?” If you answer affirmative to that question, then accepting electronic gift cards is good for your business.
The second question is why will accepting electronic gift cards help your business? The fact is that accepting electronic gift cards will boost your sales because it will create word of mouth advertising for your business, and it will drive more customers to your store who will buy more than what is on the gift cards. In addition, some gift cards will simply not be redeemed therefore you will have near 100% profit on all unredeemed gift cards.
They key is to take your gift card program and electronically integrate it with your merchant services processing company so that all money flows into your bank account daily, all customers know their exact balance on their gift card and you can eliminate your risk of gift card fraud.
Keep on reading. Although we have finished 12 out of 12 parts of our 12 part merchant service series , we will have a bonus chapter on the topic of “Can my payment processor actually help me increase my sales?”
