Employers are saving up to 99 per cent on postage and related costs by using reloadable gift cards from The Voucher Shop. Since the introduction of reloadable gift cards, The Voucher Shop has saved clients over £400,000 on postage incurred on staff discount and reward schemes.
Kuljit Kaur, Head of Business Development at The Voucher Shop, explained
“Reloadable cards are the gift that goes on giving. In the past, employers would be hit with a surprisingly high cost of posting paper vouchers to a recipient on a monthly basis. Multiply that by hundreds if not thousands of recipients and that’s a lot of wasted money. With a reloadable card, the employer only pays for postage once, when the card is issued to the recipient.”
Reloadable cards accounted for around 30 per cent of all employee rewards issued by The Voucher Shop in 2013. As reloadable cards become increasingly popular amongst employers and their employees, this figure is expected to rise to around 70 per cent by 2015.
The Voucher Shop has found that those employers offering reloadable cards as part of their employee incentive and benefits package were enjoying financial and operational benefits resulting from streamlined administration, more efficient, once-only delivery and enhanced security.
Kaur continued,
“As the cards need to be activated upon receipt by the individual, they are of no value until that point so there’s no need to use expensive recorded delivery. They also overcome the costs associated with replacing paper vouchers that can get lost and are easily torn or damaged.”
A large insurance provider, that now uses reloadable cards as staff reward, stated;
“Since moving much of our employee reward activity over from paper vouchers to reloadable gift cards and e-vouchers, we’ve benefitted from savings of over 60 per cent on postage costs. We’ve seen a considerable reduction in any lost in post issues, resulting in savings of around 30 per cent on replacement vouchers and also improved the speed at which our rewards can be redeemed by individuals recognised by their colleagues.”
Even greater savings are available to clients who offer discounted gift cards as part of a flexible employee benefit scheme.
Analysis of Reloadable Card Usage
Analysis of spend across 26,000 reloadable cards issued by The Voucher Shop, within 227 client programmes over the past 18 months revealed that the average card is reloaded 6 times, rising to high as 7.91 times for supermarket gift cards. This makes reloadable gift cards great news for employees and employers alike.
“They’ve improved the speed at which employees can redeem their rewards at the same time as reducing the risk of the card being lost or stolen. Reloadable cards are the perfect combination of form and function. They are an ideal mechanism by which a company can help employees to cope with the rising cost of living and demonstrate that employees’ efforts are appreciated” says Kaur.
The Voucher Shop offers a range of different reloadable gift cards specifically designed to supplement household income by enabling employees to save on everyday purchases. By committing to purchase a particular card type from The Voucher Shop’s extensive range each month participants can save up to 15% on their everyday shopping at their choice of numerous well known retailers.
