Today sees the launch of two unique gift cards by reward and incentive specialist Love2reward. This follows an investment by parent company Park Group, to create its own IT infrastructure and supporting processes to allow it to issue and process pre-paid cards; all of which culminated in gaining FSA authorisation to issue e-money.
This technology will also allow Park Card Services Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Park Group Plc) to create a variety of cards for specific markets, all under the generic brand of Flexecash.
Corporate users can choose whether to send out the gift cards live (with value already loaded); inactive (simply requiring activation); or with no value assigned (requiring value to be subsequently loaded). This makes the Love2shop and Love2choose gift cards ideal for all types of scheme for customer and staff reward, including flexible and voluntary benefits which may require on-going regular loading of value.
Both cards allow for bulk activation by the client or activation by the individual upon receipt, and recipients have multiple balance checking options. As well as being able to check value online, recipients can opt to register their mobile phone for services to receive alerts via SMS (charges apply) – including payment notification which will confirm details as purchases are made; and threshold notification, which is triggered once the card balance goes below the threshold amount set by the cardholder.
Benefits to the corporate user include the ability to load any value above £20; postage savings as cards can be distributed via normal delivery rather than expensive secured services because cards can be sent out inactive; greater security as cards can be suspended if lost or stolen; easy scheme administration and, finally large clients can have personalised cards featuring their own logo and branding.
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Additionally the Love2shop and Love2choose cards offer unique benefits over other pre-paid multi-option cards including the fact that they don’t incur setup fees, load fees, annual maintenance or management charges. In addition cards can be restricted to spend in selected retailers, thereby allowing the client to tailor their scheme perfectly to match recipient profile.
At the time of launch, retailers that will accept the cards include Debenhams, Comet, Matalan, BHS, River Island, New Look, H Samuel, Ernest Jones, Peacocks, HMV and Wilkinson. Additional retailers will be announced over the coming weeks.
