Luxury shirt retailer launches Pink gift card
Luxury shirt maker Thomas Pink has launched the Pink gift card aimed at providing customers with a secure and convenient alternative to gift vouchers. Thoman Pink is one of the luxury goods companies owned by LVMH. The card system is being supplied by Retail Decisions (ReD), the UK card issuer and card fraud prevention and payment processing provider. It can be charged with any value and will be redeemable both in-store and via IVR (interactive voice recognition), and available throughout the store network in the UK and USA. ReD says the UK pre-paid card market is set to become the biggest in Europe, with a predicted total spend of £17bn by 2010.
As with any new form of payment transaction, fraudsters have begun targeting gift cards and fraud has been rising steadily, particularly in the US. Figures from ReD – based on over fourteen billion card transactions it processes each year – show that gift cards were the largest target for card-not-present fraud in 2006.
ReD privides its own fraud prevention technology for gift cards. It is able to monitor both purchases and redemption of gift cards. Git cards hold no value until they are activated at the till, in contrast to traditional paper vouchers, In addition, with the advanced promotional features provided by the ReD gift card programme, Pink will be able to incorporate gift cards into its marketing campaigns to boost sales. For example, it can develop promotional, event-specific cards that can be used to promote the opening of new retail outlets.
Jonathan Heilbron, MD of Pink, commented: “The adoption of gift cards over paper vouchers is a key development for Pink, enabling the business to incorporate cards into marketing efforts, remove the manual reconciliation required with vouchers and minimise theft and fraud. “Long term we expect gift cards to play a key role within retail operations, delivering further features and benefits, and it was vital that we chose the right partner.”