Update 12/30/21: It looks like my 5th prediction was correct after all as I just discovered that the RebatesMe shopping portal is selling gift cards and offering cashback. Perhaps it started doing that before 2021, but I’m counting it as a win!
Update 12/28/21: At the start of the year I made 8 predictions relating to the world of gift cards. I did a little better than I thought I might, so check out my original predictions below along with the results listed in red.
I made a number of predictions over on Frequent Miler the other day for what I think will happen in the world of points and miles and thought it would be fun to do something similar here but with a focus on gift cards.
I have absolutely no clue if any of these will come true, but here’s what I think could happen during 2021.
1) Large Company Closure
2020 saw a lot of companies filing for bankruptcy. A number of them have subsequently emerged from bankruptcy having restructured their finances, but a number of others went out of business completely.
Although the second half of 2021 will hopefully see things returning to something like normal life as more people are able to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the economic impact of the pandemic will still be felt.
As a result of this, it wouldn’t surprise me if a large company closes permanently – one which is currently popular (or somewhat popular) for gift card reselling, whether that’s a retailer or large restaurant chain. I’m not sure what company that would be, but the risk of something like that happening is always worth bearing in mind when reselling gift cards.
Result – Incorrect
The economy has been far more resilient than I thought, so although some companies have gone out of business, I can’t think of any large companies notable in the gift card reselling world that shut up shop in 2021.
2) Kroger To Make Fuel Points Redeemable For Groceries
This might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I think Kroger will update their fuel points program to allow people to redeem those points for groceries too.
The Just For U program (Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Tom Thumb, etc.) already allows that. Giant, Martin’s and Stop & Shop updated their loyalty programs last year to allow that. Giant Eagle allows it too.
If Kroger does make this change, I imagine that you’d still get better value by redeeming points for savings on gas. However, if you’re racking up fuel points faster than you can redeem them (and don’t want to sell them), being able to redeem at a lesser value for groceries would still be a nice enhancement.
Kroger’s systems already have the capability to do this because back in May 2020 they targeted some customers with the ability to redeem 100 fuel points for $0.75 off groceries. That’s another reason I’m hopeful that this change is in the works.
Result – Incorrect
Unfortunately this was incorrect. Safeway, Albertsons and other Just For U stores have benefitted from improved redemption options and Giant Eagle recently introduced a new myPerks program, but Kroger is still only letting customers redeem points for savings on gas rather than groceries too.
3) Gift Card Site/App To Shut Down
There are a number of websites and apps which reward you for everyday gift card purchases. That includes Ibotta, Fluz, CrayPay and MPX; it sounds like Bitmo will be joining their ranks in 2021 too.
2020 saw the closure of Swych, so my third prediction is that 2021 will see something similar happen with a different company that sells gift cards. I don’t have any special insights into who that might be, but if it turned out to be Gyft that wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
There’s simply no compelling reason to use Gyft for everyday gift card purchases. They don’t offer rewards like other apps/sites listed above and they no longer code as 5x on Ink Plus and Ink Cash cards when checking out via PayPal. Although they occasionally run gift card sales, they’re usually fairly boring – 20% off Fanatics, 15% off Gap, etc. which are deals you can often get elsewhere.
Result – Incorrect
I’ll be honest, I’m surprised that Gyft still hasn’t shut down. They ran four gift card deals in 2021, all of which were mediocre. No other gift card sites or apps have shut down in the past 12 months that I can think of, so this was another prediction I got wrong.
4) Blackhawk Network To Power A New Gift Card Site
Blackhawk Network owns GiftCards.com, GiftCardMall and CashStar. They’re a huge player in both the online and in-store gift card selling space and only seem to be expanding.
They’ve been powering Kroger’s online gift card offering for some time and in 2020 started powering the gift card sites for Giant Eagle and Samsung Pay. My prediction is that they’ll white label a gift card selling site for another company, perhaps Albertsons/Safeway seeing as they don’t have an online gift card presence right now.
Result – Correct
Finally one I got right. Blackhawk Network is now powering gift card portals for Meijer, Harris Teeter and Price Chopper, so this prediction was a definite win.
5) Another Site/App Will Sell Instant Gift Cards
My third prediction was that a website or app which currently sells gift cards will close down. My fifth prediction is the opposite – that a site or app will start selling instant gift cards and will reward you for doing so, whether in the form of cashback, miles or points.
This won’t necessarily be a brand new site or app, but could be an existing one which starts selling gift cards for the first time. For example, in 2020 the Rakuten shopping portal started selling gift cards, offering cashback (or Membership Rewards if your account is set up that way) when buying first-hand gift cards. 2020 also saw the launch of the Slide app which is owned by Raise and offers 4-5% cashback on all gift cards sold in the app.
It wouldn’t surprise me if an existing shopping portal added this feature to their offering. That could be a cashback site like TopCashback, or perhaps one of the airline or hotel shopping portals. Cartera runs many of those (Delta, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, United and more), so it could be that a number of shopping portals simultaneously launch this.
Result – Correct
RebatesMe is now offering cashback when buying gift cards; I’ve not bought gift cards from there yet and so don’t know for sure if they’re instant, but I’m counting this as a correct prediction.
Result – Incorrect (I think)
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure whether I got this one right or wrong. I’m not aware of any notable apps or sites that started selling instant gift cards, but there might be some minor ones that do this. I’m going to count this as an incorrect guess though unless someone wants to correct me in the comments.
6) More Deals On Travel Gift Cards
2020 saw a number of deals on travel gift cards, from 10% off Alaska Airlines gift cards at Costco to a number of Delta gift card deals to Marriott offering a 15-20% discount when buying their gift cards directly.
With more people traveling again in 2021, airlines and hotel chains will want to incentivize customers to book with them rather than their competitors – even more than usual. Hyatt is doing this by running rewarding promotions for both paid and award stays, while also making it much easier to earn top tier status.
Another way travel companies could this is by running more gift card deals, so I think we’ll see this happening more often in 2021.
Result – Correct (I think)
I’m being a little lazy and so haven’t made the effort to quantify this by comparing deals in 2020 versus 2021. However, it feels like we saw more travel gift card deals in 2021 than we did in 2020. There weren’t as many deals on Hyatt and Marriott gift cards, but I think there were more for brands like Airbnb, Delta, Hotels.com, etc., plus Costco and Sam’s Club started selling Southwest, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines gift cards at a 10% discount.
7) More People Will Start Reselling Gift Cards
There are a number of different ways to manufacture spend, with new opportunities coming up and others ending. In 2020 PayPal Key was launched, although it’ll soon be ending for Amex cards.
One of the more traditional forms of MS – buying Visa gift cards and liquidating for money orders – became harder in 2020. Walmart has since sent out a memo to stores to ask them not to support this kind of MS behavior, although enforcement of that can vary from store to store.
With that kind of activity becoming harder, people will look to increase spend on their credit cards in other ways in order to earn cashback, points and miles. One method I’d expect to become more popular is gift card reselling.
This will have mixed blessings for me. On the one hand it’d be good for this site as hopefully more people will visit in order to find gift card deals. The downside is that there’ll be more competition for gift card deals. That could mean deals will sell out more quickly and resale rates could be pushed down.
There’s no way for me to quantify there being more resellers in 2021 though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is going to happen 😉
Result – Correct (I think)
This is another one that’s hard to quantify. However, it certainly feels like more people are getting involved with gift card reselling (albeit not as many as seem to have gotten involved with Buyers Groups this past year). I’m therefore counting this as a correct prediction.
8) Google Pay Will Run More Great Deals
Google relaunched its Google Pay app as GPay recently and added a bunch of good card-linked offers, including 20% back at REI, $21 at Target, 20% back at Burger King and more.
There are a lot of other deals giving 10% back or more right now and my prediction is that they’ll add even more great deals in 2021. These will provide some good gift card buying opportunities, especially when stacked with other savings opportunities like Amex Offers and Chase Offers.
Result – Correct
While I’ve been a little unsure about the validity of some of my correct predictions, this one was definitely correct. There have been dozens of deals in the Google Pay app during 2021, many of which were very useful for gift card resellers.
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Final Result
5/8 – I’m satisfied with getting more than half of my predictions correct in 2021. I’ll be publishing a new set of predictions for 2022 in the next few days, so stay tuned for those.
This is hilarious