Gift Card Sales Increase 10% Year-Over-Year: Study

Paytronix Systems, Inc., the most advanced digital guest experience platform, released the Paytronix Annual Gift Card Sales Report: 2019, which finds a consistent 10 percent year-over-year growth in gift card sales for the 220 brands surveyed in this year’s report vs. the 190 brands surveyed for its 2018 report. 

 The Paytronix Annual Gift Card Sales Report: 2019 includes an in-depth look into holiday gift card sales, sales by channel and service type, and anticipated redemption. The report also reveals new insights on eGift cards, such as average load to a virtual stored value card and how restaurants can anticipate their eGift card sales to look during the busy holiday season. With the online ordering industry expanding, the Report also examines the impact of gift cards redeemed online.

Findings include:

Higher Online Sales – Not only are quick-service gift cards redeemed more frequently, they also contribute to higher sales in the online order channel, with a 6% increase in check size on orders placed and paid for online with a gift card.

Third-Party Retail Sales -- While in-store gift card sales continue to contribute to more than half of annual gift card sales, this percentage decreases slightly in favor of Third-Party sales. Discounted gift card sales, through retailers like Costco, BJ’s, and Sam’s Club amount to over a third of all third-party sales. Restaurants seeking to increase gift card sales should investigate third-party channels, given that adding just one third-party retail partner could contribute to increases of more than 25%.

Holiday Gift Card Sales -- Gift card sales drove a large portion of the increase in card sales from 2017 to 2018 as the popularity of gifting stored-value cards continue to grow. The average increase in card sales throughout the year was around 6.3%, but in the holiday months, gift card sales increased over 15% from 2017. Gift card sales between November 1st and December 24th pick up for the holiday season around mid-November, with the first noticeable spike of sales in 2016 – 2018 on Black Friday.

Download the Paytronix Annual Gift Card Sales Report: 2019. 

Methodology

Following trends in closed-loop restaurant gift card sales, the Paytronix Annual Gift Card Sales Report: 2019 includes data from 2017 – 2018 gift card sales from 220 brands and compares those figures to the findings of its 2018 report, which tracked 2016 – 2017 gift card sales from 190 restaurant brands.