Update 12/26/22: At the start of this year I made 8 predictions relating to the gift card world. It’s always fun to look back to see how well or badly I’ve done with these kinds of predictions, so there are updates in red below.
At the start of 2021 I made 8 predictions for what I thought would happen in the gift card world this past year. I ended up getting half of them correct which was pretty good going compared to how I thought I might do.
I figured I’d do the same again for 2022, so here are my 8 predictions for what I think will happen with gift cards in the coming year.
1) Blackhawk Network Will Launch 5 New Happy Or Happy-Esque Gift Card Brands
A few years ago Blackhawk Network launched Happy gift cards. Since then they’ve launched new Happy-esque gift cards known as Giving Good, Choice and Holiday Favorites.
In addition to that, they’ve introduced new flavors of Happy and Choice gift cards, so my first prediction is that they’ll create at least five new Happy or Happy-esque gift card brands. That could be different flavors of existing cards or perhaps a whole new line of gift cards in the vein of Happy cards.
Result – Correct
I haven’t checked exactly how many new brands they’ve introduced this year, but I’d guess it’d be close to a dozen as there’s been a new Giving Good brand and tons of new Choice cards, as well as the rollout of the One4All gift card brand.
2) Best Buy Will Stop Offering Rewards And/Or Elite Status When Buying Gift Cards
This is a prediction, not what I hope will happen! Best Buy currently offers rewards when buying gift cards from them – both their own gift cards and those for third parties. Gift card spend also counts towards elite status.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Best Buy decided that this was becoming too costly, so this second prediction is that they’ll stop offering rewards when buying gift cards and/or those purchases won’t count towards elite status.
Result – Incorrect (Mostly)
I was – thankfully – incorrect about this guess, but I was somewhat close. Best Buy is indeed still offering rewards on gift card purchases and having that count towards elite status. However, there have been some big changes which make the program far less generous.
For starters, you now only earn 1% back in rewards no matter which status level you’re at. One of the nice things in the past about reaching Elite Plus status was that you’d earn 2.5% back in rewards.
Another negative change that was implemented this year was that purchases of Apple gift cards no longer earn rewards. Deals on Apple gift cards tend to be some of the better offers they run, so missing out on earning rewards on those purchases is disappointing.
Ultimately though, I earn zero points for this prediction as I was more pessimistic than I needed to be.
3) Slide Will Introduce A Lifetime Limit For Portal Earnings
This is another prediction that I hope won’t happen but wouldn’t surprise me if it did come about. Slide is owned by Raise and Raise has a lifetime limit on how much cashback you can earn through shopping portals, albeit with different limits per portal.
The Slide app has been very generous over the past year, increasing the amount of cashback you can earn in the app directly to 6% while also providing the opportunity to earn additional cashback through a shopping portal. Every so often TopCashback offers 32% for new users and 7% for existing users; existing users being able to earn up to 13% cashback on most brands available in the app is a great deal.
I therefore think that Slide will place a lifetime limit on how much cashback you can earn via shopping portals, although that may well not happen in 2022 seeing as they’re still trying to gain traction. They might also have less urgency about doing that now that gift cards purchased from Slide can’t be resold on Raise.
Result – Incorrect (sort of)
Unfortunately the reality is that Slide made a much worse change than introducing a lifetime limit on earning cashback via shopping portals. They initially dropped the cashback rate on several higher-value brands, then paused their affiliate program entirely which meant that you no longer earn any cashback whatsoever.
This is – supposedly – just a pausing of their affiliate program rather than a permanent change while they work on a new project (which seems like it might be a crypto debit card).
My prediction was therefore incorrect, but I’m going to award myself half a point for this one as there’s a de facto lifetime limit as things stand seeing as no one can earn cashback via a shopping portal at all.
4) American Express Will Run More Membership Rewards-Earning Amex Offers
American Express runs two types of Amex Offers – one giving statement credits and one giving bonus Membership Rewards. With some Amex Offers there’ll be two versions; for example, you might get an offer for a retailer giving $50 back or 5,000 bonus points when spending $250.
We’ve seen fewer Amex Offers earning bonus Membership Rewards over the past year, yet Amex has been handing out Membership Rewards like candy with No Lifetime Language signup bonuses and Authorized User bonuses. It wouldn’t surprise me to see those kinds of offers not being as prevalent in 2022, but I’m predicting that more Amex Offers giving bonus Membership Rewards will take their place.
Result – Incorrect
I don’t have any quantitative evidence to state that this prediction was incorrect, but anecdotally I haven’t noticed more Membership Rewards-earning Amex Offers. If anything, there have been far more Amex Offers giving lackluster single-figure percentage statement credits at more at and more retailers (e.g. 3% at some random mattress company, 4% at a shoe store, etc.).
5) iConsumer Will Offer Something In Addition To – Or Instead Of – Stock
Over the last few years the iConsumer shopping portal has switched from offering cashback to stock to cashback and stock to Bitcoin to stock to who-knows-what.
It seems like they chase whatever the latest fad is, so I’m predicting that in 2022 they’ll offer a new earning opportunity for shopping through their portal. Perhaps it’ll be Dogecoin, maybe NFTs or whatever the new thing is in 2022.
Result – Incorrect (I think)
iConsumer tends to send out an email every few months or so giving an update on their business. I tend to quickly scan them and haven’t noticed them state that they’re changing their earning structure yet again.
6) Chase Offers Will Get Better
Chase started running Chase Offers a few years ago which work in much the same way as Amex Offers. For the most part though, they’ve been inferior because the percentages aren’t as high and/or the spending limits are so low. They’ll offer 15% back as a statement credit, but it’ll only be valid on $30 of spend or something like that.
We saw hints of a change towards the end of 2021 though. They ran a handful of ‘Flash Deals’ giving 20% cashback for Bed Bath & Beyond, Walgreens, McDonald’s and Exxon Mobil. I’m therefore predicting that we’ll start seeing even more better Chase Offers in 2022. That might come in the form of better percentages or higher limits for how much you can earn in statement credits.
Result – Correct
Similar to the Amex Offers prediction, I don’t have anything quantitative confirming whether I got this prediction correct. Anecdotally though, I feel like we’ve seen more Chase Offers this year at useful companies with decent percentage statement credits and good maximum cashback limits (e.g. 20% back at Kohl’s on up to $100 spend).
7) Citi Offers Will Be Rolled Out To All Cardholders
Amex and Chase aren’t the only show in town when it comes to card-linked credit card spending offers. Citi launched their own version in the last year or two called Citi Offers.
What’s been disappointing about their program is that it’s been targeted, so my 7th prediction is that Citi Offers will be rolled out to all cardholders. This is a hopeful prediction seeing as I’m not one of the lucky ones to have been targeted already!
Result – Correct
Woo-hoo! This one I’m pretty much entirely correct on. I don’t think people who only have business cards have access to Citi Offers and I’ve seen reports that some types of cards don’t get them (e.g. the Costco Visa card, although I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone). However, earlier this year Citi Offers did get rolled out to pretty much all personal cardholders, so I’ll count this in the win column.
8) Kroger Fuel Points Will Be Redeemable For Groceries
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.
Result – Incorrect
This was sadly incorrect. This might still be on the horizon if Kroger’s purchase of Albertsons goes through, but it’s not happening in 2022 unless there’s an unexpected end-of-year announcement.
Final Score – 3.5/8
I had a couple of early wins with my predictions in 2022, so I was hopefully that at least half of them would be correct by the end of the year, but alas not. Stay tuned for my 2023 predictions coming within the next week.
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What do you think?
Am I going to end up scoring 0/8 by the end of the year, or do you think some of these predictions will turn out to be correct? If so, which ones? Let us know in the comments below.
re #2, logical, yet perish the prediction. 🙂 Besides, little push-back, if BestBuy did that, they’d lose all the business generated by folks using their certificates — who otherwise don’t buy much (other than gift cards) at BB and/or buy their gadget and home stuff elsewhere…. and 2. BestBuy mba’s would not like losing all the “breakage” caused when folks forget to use their certificates before they expire.. (far better to request they not auto-issue the expiring certs….)