Nation's Businesses Stoke Summer Sales With Gift Card Offers

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- More and more businesses are turning to gift cards as a way to grab the attention of buyers who are distracted with vacations, summer holidays, kid's activities, grass mowing and warmer weather. Businesses use gift cards for employee recognition, sales incentives, corporate gifts, product rebates, and consumer promotions.

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iCARD Systems, having provided gift card products to more than 1500 corporations of every size in virtually every industry since 1998, is one of only a handful of companies that have probably noticed this trend and have the ability to analyze it.

"We've noticed a significant uptick in corporate gift card sales this spring for summer promotions," said Jeff Ehney, iCARD's founder. "I see this as either a healthy sign that the economy is rebounding or that companies are realizing that the ROI on promotions that use gift cards is significant."

In most cases, an employee or consumer must do something fairly significant to earn the gift card. So "gift" is more a term of convenience. As an employee incentive, employees must complete some task or reach some goal in order to earn the gift card. Meanwhile, consumers often earn gift cards as a rebate for buying a product or participating in a survey.

iCARD provides a wide array of gift card products and online systems to support various promotions. For example, corporations can order prepaid Visa cards in virtually any denomination and have them delivered directly to recipients or delivered in bulk, for additional packaging and distribution needs. iCARD manages the branding, invoicing, processing, delivery, and customer service for these prepaid Visa programs.

Merchant gift cards remain quite popular with businesses, and iCARD happily supplies bulk orders of individual merchant cards for 170+ merchants. However, iCARD's emailable and printable Super Gift Card is becoming a popular alternative that corporations are embracing with enthusiasm.

"Our Super Gift Card product enables the recipient to decide which gift cards, from more than 170 different merchants, they'd like to have," said Eric Strautman, iCARD marketing and communications. "But what companies really like is that it is delivered online, redeemed online and still gives the recipient a great deal of flexibility for tailoring the reward to their needs. It just ends up being a more timely, online, and satisfying experience for the recipient."

This platform allows individuals and companies to deliver a personalized and customized eCard with an attached gift card code that is redeemable for as many as 170+ different merchant gift cards. iCARD licenses this platform to other companies and also operates it as their own consumer and corporate gift card solution at http://www.icardgiftcard.com.

"iCARD is proud that its products are being used profitably by companies to improve summer sales and to keep employees properly motivated and on-task," said Strautman.

About iCARD Systems

Founded in 1998, iCARD is a pioneer in the development of network-branded prepaid cards and was one of the first to offer Visat Gift Cards online. Today, iCARD is a leading provider of all manner of gift cards for corporate incentives, promotions and rebates. Additionally, iCARD is a dominant player in digital gift card delivery. Its emailable gift card gives consumers access to more than 150 top merchant brands. iCARD is an Independent Sales Organization for the Bancorp Bank and is a Hallmark Cards licensee. Its channel partners include American Greetings and AOL. iCARD has serviced more than 1,500 corporate client and more than a million cardholders. Learn more at http://www.icardsystems.com or order a gift card at http://www.icardgiftcard.com.

SOURCE iCARD Systems