Restaurant Gift Cards Soon To Be Everywhere

[jeffrey]

If you like gift cards and fast food, you can expect both your waistline and wallet to become a a lot fatter this coming year. Even with all the disadvantages that come along with gift cards, they continue to grow in popularity. In fact, gift cards are expected to move into the number one spot as gift given surpassing apparel this Christmas according to Deloitte & Touche. Though slow to join the bandwagon, you can expect a host of new reloadable restaurant gift cards to start appearing to add onto the $17.3 billion in gift cards spent at retailers this year. That doesn't even count the $23 billion that will go toward bank gift cards.




After the Starbucks Card proved a huge success accounting for over 10% of their North American revenue this year, a slew of fast food restaurants including McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts and Jack in the Box have come out with, or will soon, reloadable gift cards. Although these cards are not likely to have the large fees that typically accompany the bank issued gift cards, they do encourage customers to spend more than they would with cash.