(The Results) My 6 Gift Card Predictions For 2023

Update 12/31/23: Exactly one year ago I made six predictions as to what I thought would happen in the gift card world during 2023. I ended up scoring a solid four out of six which I’m happy with. I’ve added comments in red below explaining how and why I’ve scored things the way I did.

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At the start of 2022 I made 8 predictions for what I thought would happen in the gift card world this past year. I ended up getting 3.5 of them correct which wasn’t quite as good as the previous year when I scored 4/8.

I figured I’d do the same again for 2023, so here are my 6 predictions for what I think will happen with gift cards in the coming year.

1) More Happy Gift Cards Will Be Retired

Happy gift cards were launched by Blackhawk Network back in 2018. Since then a number of new Happy brands have been launched, but there have now been 19 of those brands that have been retired.

Blackhawk Network seems to be placing much more focus nowadays on their Choice gift card range which works similarly to Happy cards, as well as the recent addition of One4All gift cards. I don’t have any inside knowledge, but I get the impression that they’re phasing out Happy gift cards in favor of Choice and One4All. My first prediction is therefore that we’ll see more Happy gift card brands retired this year.

More specifically, we’ll see a net negative number of Happy brands. At present, there are 17 active Happy brands if including the Thanks Teacher brand, so even if more Happy brands happen to be added in 2023, I think we’ll see even more than that retired and so we’ll end 2023 with fewer than 17 Happy brands.

Result – Correct

This was even more accurate than I thought it would be. Giftcards.com (which is owned by the same company that issues Happy gift cards) no longer has any Happy gift cards listed on their website. HappyCards.com which initially only had Happy gift cards now has none of them, instead listing Choice, One4All and Giving Good gift cards. There are Choice/One4All gift cards with ‘Happy’ in their names, but they’re not the same as Happy gift cards were.

It appears that Blackhawk Network is also looking to phase out Choice branding too, instead going forward with One4All and Giving Good gift cards. See more about that here.

2) A Company Whose Gift Cards Common With Resellers Will Go Out Of Business

There are a number of risks when it comes to gift card reselling. One of those is that you’ll buy gift cards for a retailer or restaurant chain and they subsequently go out of business, rendering the gift card value worthless.

Note that this is different to a company filing for bankruptcy. There have been a number of companies who filed for bankruptcy in recent years, but you could still redeem their gift cards. What causes the problem on the gift card front is when they go out of business entirely.

With so many companies being loaded up on debt, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or more major retailers or restaurant chains going out of business. My prediction is that one of those will be a brand that’s common for gift card resellers to resell; if this prediction comes true, I hope you’re not left holding the bag.

Result – Correct

The most prominent example of this would be Bed Bath & Beyond.

3) Bitmo Will Officially Shut Up Shop

I posted an R.I.P. post about Bitmo a month or two ago as it seemed like the app was dead because you couldn’t generate gift cards when paying for them or when redeeming your points.

That post seemed like it was slightly premature because several weeks later people – myself included – finally received a reply from Bitmo advising that they’d generated our pending gift cards.

However, I have zero trust in them now and wouldn’t buy gift cards from them again unless there was some kind of ludicrously lucrative promotion that made the risk worthwhile. More likely than a generous promotion like that is that they’ll officially close up shop. If you have unredeemed gift cards in the app, make a note of those details ASAP in case the app goes completely offline.

Result – Correct

I think this is correct as Bitmo is no longer listed in the Google Play Store.

4) Kroger Fuel Points Will Be Redeemable For Groceries

I’ve made this exact same prediction for the last two years, so here it is again. Here’s what I wrote last year:

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.

If Kroger manages to satisfy competition concerns which allows their merger with Albertsons to go through, I think it’s even more likely that they’ll update their fuel points program to allow you to redeem for groceries. That’s because Albertsons and its affiliate stores allow you to do that already and there’s next-to-zero chance Kroger would remove that capability, although there’s no guarantee they’ll add it themselves – as evidenced by my incorrect prediction the last couple of years! However, Kroger is already trialing the ability to redeem points for groceries on a targeted basis with their Fresh Mode app/feature, so hopefully that – or something similar to it – will roll out to everyone in 2023.

Result – Incorrect

I’d expected a decision to have been made with regards to the Kroger/Albertsons merger in 2023, but we’re still waiting to see as to whether that’ll be allowed to go through. As a result, Kroger has understandably not made any significant changes to their loyalty program.

5) Giftcards.com Will Offer Frequent Gift Card Deals

From 2018-2021, Giftcards.com didn’t run many deals on gift cards. They’d provide promo codes giving a discount on Visa gift cards once or twice a year, but that would be it other than for very occasional deals where they’d offer a few extra percent in rewards on Happy gift cards.

2022 – particularly the last couple of months of it – saw loads more deals. In December alone, we saw deals giving discounts on gift cards for Petco, Big Lots, Fandango, One4All, various Happy, Giving Good and Choice brands, Chipotle, Regal, Domino’s and Lowe’s, as well as on Visa gift cards. The month before that we got discounts on both Visa and Mastercard gift cards, as well as some third party brands.

Some of these were decent deals, especially when taking into account the Giftcards.com Citi Offer and shopping portal earnings (although Giftcards.com has disappeared from airline shopping portals at the time of posting this). My 5th prediction is that they’ll continue offering a higher than average number of deals throughout the year, but especially from October-December in 2023.

Result – Correct

I nailed this one. To be honest though, I hadn’t expected us to see quite as many deals as Giftcards.com ended up running in 2023. Not all of the deals were amazing, but it seemed like there was a new deal nearly every week which, at the very least, was good for personal use.

6) Office Depot/OfficeMax & Staples Visa/Mastercard Gift Card Deals Will Be Less Enticing More Frequently

Perhaps this is cheating seeing as this already started in 2022, but I’m predicting that Visa and Mastercard gift card deals will be less enticing this year. When it comes to Office Depot/OfficeMax, they’ve started carrying Visa and Mastercard gift cards with higher purchase fees. Seeing as their promotions tend to give $15 off rather than waiving purchase fees like Staples, it means there’s now a slight cost to doing those deals before accounting for 5x, Dosh and Payce earnings.

Staples is slightly different. Although they usually waive purchase fees, there were one or two occasions last year where they only offered $5 off purchase fees, then recently they only waived purchase fees on $100 Visa gift cards rather than $200 denominations, plus they reduced the limit from 8 per customer per day to 5 per customer per day, slashing your spending opportunity from $1,600 (8 * $200) to $500 (5 * $100) and potentially increasing your liquidation costs.

This is another prediction where I’d like to be wrong, but I think more Visa and Mastercard deals at office supply stores will come at a slight cost or with smaller (official) spending opportunities on a more frequent basis.

Result – Incorrect

I think we had maybe one or two weeks with weird limits and in recent weeks Office Depot/OfficeMax has lowered the limit to five per order rather than ten. However, my prediction was rooted in much worse pessimism which – thankfully – didn’t come to pass. I’m therefore glad to have gotten this prediction incorrect.

Your Predictions

Would you like to make any predictions of your own? Or add your thoughts as to what I’ve predicted? Let us know in the comments below.