My 5 Gift Card Predictions For 2024

For the last few years I’ve been making predictions as to what I think will happen in the gift card world for the coming year. With it being New Year’s Eve, it’s time to gaze into my crystal ball to see what will happen over the course of the next 12 months. Here’s what I saw.

1) A Travel Company Will Launch A New Shopping Portal

A company called Cartera runs the shopping portals for most airlines (American, Alaska, United, Southwest and Delta), as well as a few other companies (e.g. USAA). A different company called Collinson runs shopping portals for some other travel companies (e.g. Wyndham and British Airways), so it doesn’t seem hard for Cartera and Collinson to white-label these sites for other companies.

My first prediction is therefore that a travel-related company will launch a new shopping portal. My guess is that the most likely candidate would be Bilt Rewards, but perhaps we’ll see a hotel program getting back into this game. I think Marriott, IHG and Choice all used to have shopping portals, so perhaps one of them would be interested.

2) Costco Will Expand Its Discounted Gift Card Lineup

When I first started GC Galore five years ago, Costco sold very few discounted gift cards online. They’d sometimes have discounts on iTunes (now Apple) gift cards and a few others, but IIRC they had maybe a dozen different discounted brands.

Over the last 2-3 years they’ve expanded that offering and are now up to 60 different discounted gift card deals (if you include the movie ticket packages they sell but exclude the music and sports events tickets). They’ve been showing no signs of slowing down, so I’m predicting that 2024 will end with them offering substantial discounts on more than 60 different brands.

3) Raise Will Make Some Other Notable Change

Similar to how Blackhawk Network can’t seem to stick to a plan for its multi-store gift card brands, Raise has been having seemingly similar identity issues. They launched the Slide app, changed how cashback was offered in the Slide app, changed how cashback was offered again, then renamed it Raise which is in addition to – but completely different from – the Raise website and the Raise (Marketplace) app, all of which sell gift cards and all of which are part of the same company but which do different things yet also do the same things including often running the same deals.

If it was painful reading that long sentence, that’s not even close to being as painful as it’s been trying to work out what their strategy is. I’m guessing they’re not done with their changes, so in 2024 I’m predicting they’ll make another notable change. Perhaps they’ll close down the Raise (formerly Slide) or Raise (Marketplace) app, maybe they’ll go back to the Slide branding, maybe they’ll bring back shopping portal earnings when buying gift cards through their apps and/or sites or maybe they’ll start running regular promo codes. Who knows? Raise certainly doesn’t seem to, but hopefully we’ll know by the end of 2024 what additional spaghetti they’ve decided to throw against the wall.

4) Incomm Will Run More Deals Online

Two of the biggest players in the gift card-issuing world are Blackhawk Network and Incomm. It feels like Incomm has been expanding its footprint in recent years. I believe they’re now the company that issues the cards on gift card racks for Giant, Martin’s, Stop & Shop and Giant Food Stores, as well as the Albertsons family of stores (Safeway, Tom Thumb, etc.)

In addition to that, they’ve been starting to offer more gift card deals online via sites they run including VanillaGift.com, AmexGiftCard.com, MastercardGiftCard.com and TheGiftCardShop.com. They also ran at least one deal online on their white-labeled site for Albertsons in 2023.

My fourth prediction is that we’ll see even more gift card deals online from Incomm via one or more of those sites.

5) Kroger Fuel Points Will Be Redeemable For Groceries

I’ve made this exact same prediction for the last three years, so why break with tradition?! Here’s what I wrote a couple of years ago:

If you get a sense of déjà vu, that’s because I predicted that this would happen in 2021. That was obviously wrong, but I feel like it’s a prediction that will be correct eventually – it’s just a question of when.

In the last couple of years other grocery stores have improved and/or updated their offerings. Giant Eagle has launched myPerks, Safeway, Albertsons and other stores using the Just For U program have gotten improved redemption options, Giant, Martin’s and Stop & Shop customers can now redeem points for grocery savings in addition to gas savings, etc.

Kroger is a holdout in that respect because you can still only redeem points for savings on gas, so I’m predicting that they’ll start allowing you to redeem points for grocery savings in addition to fuel savings. Fuel savings will still offer the best redemption option in terms of how much you can save percentage-wise, but many people would benefit from being able to redeem points for savings on food.

We’re still waiting to see whether or not the Kroger and Albertsons merger will be allowed through, so until that occurs I doubt we’ll see any change. Hopefully things will be resolved one way or another in 2024, then we can hopefully see this prediction come true.