Danks Holdings Limited, one of Australia’s largest retailers and wholesalers, is entering the electronic gift card market at a time when the value of such cards purchased in Australia has already passed $1 billion.
Retail Decisions (ReD) will provide the new solution. Gift cards are prepaid cards that allow a pre-determined amount of money to be loaded onto a card by the purchaser that can then be used by the recipient to make one or multiple purchases.
“Gift cards have been growing in popularity for several years and consumers now prefer purchasing gift cards for their favourite stores,” says Con Dekazos, national merchandise and marketing manager, Danks Holdings. “Compared to the old style paper vouchers, gift cards are much easier to carry, easier to pay for goods and easier to redeem.”
Danks is a distributor of hardware and gardening products, servicing over 700 independently owned and operated retail businesses through the Home Timber and Hardware, Thrifty–Link Hardware and PlantsPlus Garden Centre brands. It also provides wholesale distribution to a further 1500 independent stores.
“Danks now has a modern consumer offering compared to our previous paper-based vouchers, with better merchandising and branding opportunities. This provides a more consistent look and feel and is simpler for staff to manage. In addition, it provides significant operational cost savings around security, administration and fraud prevention,” says Dekazos.
The ReD platform will also provide an integrated web-based management interface and removes individual merchant responsibility for maintaining gift cards and gives complete control and visibility back to Danks’ head office.
“The decision by Danks to select ReD’s platform is a clear demonstration of our ability to support clients in achieving ambitions through our portfolio of card issuing, payment processing and fraud prevention services. ReD’s prepaid capability gives retailers an exciting, comprehensive payment solution that will increase their revenue and customer loyalty, while reducing costs and vulnerability to fraud,” says Carl Clump, CEO, ReD.