Tag: gift card api

How to Use Bulk Gift Cards for Sales Incentive Programs

Posted on by Geoff Miller

How To Use Bulk Gift Cards for Sales Incentives Programs

Motivating sales teams isn’t just about numbers—it’s about fostering a sense of recognition and appreciation. The question isn’t whether a sales incentive program is worth implementing but which method will best drive employees to excel.

Gift cards are tokens of gratitude that recognize employees’ efforts and empower them to choose rewards that resonate with their interests. This article explores why bulk gift cards are the ultimate sales incentive for motivating and acknowledging sales teams and how to pick the best provider for your company.

What makes bulk gift cards ideal for sales incentives?

Motivating sales teams is challenging for businesses of all sizes, yet essential for success and team morale. Since 2010, U.S. gift card sales have doubled, exceeding $200 billion in 2023. This growth reflects their increasing popularity and appeal. No wonder businesses use gift cards as incentives—the benefits are clear.

Serves as symbols of recognition

Regular income is routine and expected, providing financial stability but lacking excitement or special recognition. Gift cards stand out as an acknowledgment of exceptional performance, enhancing the recipient’s sense of accomplishment beyond their regular paycheck.

Flexibility and personalization

Partnering with a company that offers thousands of gift card brands empowers employees with autonomy similar to cash. They can select a gift card that matches their preferences and needs, making the reward more meaningful and enhancing overall satisfaction and engagement.

Cost-effective alternative to cash

Issuing bulk gift cards is a cost-effective alternative to cash bonuses. Companies can purchase gift cards in bulk at discounted rates, maximizing their budget and rewarding more employees without increasing total expenditure. This is particularly advantageous for businesses with tight budgets or those wanting to award employees frequently.

How do you decide which gift cards to pick?

For a sales incentive program to succeed, businesses must choose gift cards that resonate with employees. Consider the brands’ geographical reach: some have a global presence, ideal for multi-location enterprises. Others cater to local tastes and needs. 

Discounts on bulk purchases also vary; selecting brands with better deals allows a company to stretch its incentive budget and reward more employees without increasing costs. Offering a variety of choices is vital, as employees highly value the freedom to select gift cards that match their preferences.

How do you pick a bulk gift card provider?

Extensive brand selection

Look for providers that offer a wide variety of brands. An ideal bulk gift card provider has access to thousands of brands, ensuring you cater to diverse employee wants.

Global accessibility

If your company operates internationally, choose a provider that supports global accessibility. This flexibility allows for a consistent incentive program across all locations, simplifying management and ensuring employees feel equally valued.

Simple integration and distribution

The ease of incorporating and distributing gift cards is crucial. Providers offering robust API support make integrating gift card distribution into your existing systems easy, minimizing administrative burdens and ensuring timely delivery of rewards.

Bulk savings

Investigate the discounts available on bulk purchases from different providers. Some may offer significant savings, allowing you to maximize your budget and honor more employees for small achievements.

Avoiding extra fees

Be aware of any potential service or partnership fees. The best providers offer transparent pricing without hidden costs, preserving the value of your incentive program.

How do you distribute and manage bulk gift cards effectively?

Effectively managing bulk gift cards requires meticulous planning. Define clear distribution criteria, segment your audience based on preferences, and schedule regular distributions to maintain motivation and engagement.

Integrate reward, HR, or payroll platforms with gift card providers via API to streamline distribution. This automation, triggered by events like meeting sales targets, saves time, reduces errors, and ensures timely benefit delivery. APIs also offer real-time tracking, facilitating prompt issue resolution.

Clear communication about the program’s mechanisms and expectations is crucial. Leaders should inform employees how and when they will receive their gift cards, establishing transparency.

How do you track and measure the success of gift card incentives?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success

Start by identifying KPIs that align with your incentive program goals. Measure changes in sales metrics, such as revenue, conversion rates, and average order value, to assess the impact on driving sales. Monitor employee engagement through surveys, feedback, or satisfaction scores to evaluate motivation and retention. Track customer satisfaction metrics, like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and retention rates, to see if incentives improve loyalty. 

Companies should also consider other indicators—employee morale, turnover, and referral rates—for a comprehensive view of success.

Time frame for seeing results

Results from gift card incentives vary based on factors including program nature, industry, and goals. Immediate impacts, like sales improvements, may occur within weeks or months. Increased employee engagement or customer loyalty may need monitoring over quarters or years.

Importance of bulk gift card partner insights

Partner with a bulk gift card provider that offers insights and analytics. These providers deliver robust reporting capabilities and data analytics to track performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve your incentive strategy continuously.

Conclusion: Partner with NeoCurrency to use bulk gift cards for sales incentives

In conclusion, this article emphasizes the importance of using bulk gift cards as incentives to motivate and honor sales teams effectively. It highlights how gift cards offer a tangible symbol of appreciation, provide flexibility and personalization, and are a cost-effective incentive solution.

Choosing the right gift cards and the provider is crucial. Consider brand selection, global accessibility, integration ease, and cost efficiency. Through effective distribution and management, constantly improve incentive programs and track success through KPIs.

With a global reach spanning over 120 countries, NeoCurrency provides cash-like payments accepted worldwide. Choose from our extensive selection of 2,000+ brands across more than 60 countries to personalize rewards for your team. 

Ready to revamp your sales incentive program? Request a demo today and discover how NeoCurrency revolutionizes your approach with bulk gift cards!

Recommended readings

What Are Subject Incentive Programs in Market Research?

Posted on by Geoff Miller

What are Subject Incentive Programs for Market Research

Recruiting high-quality subjects for your research studies is time-consuming work. 

Offering and distributing the right incentives to drive participation is half the battle. Saving time and effort on this process allows you to focus on the data and insights you collect. 

Simple high-value offers are the key to research incentive programs. This article discusses incentive options, why you should use them, and the most effective options.

What’s the difference between market research and marketing research?

While they sound similar, market research and marketing research have distinct differences. 

Market research is the broader concept focusing on the market landscape as a whole. It includes user demographics, customer behaviors, market trends, competitors, and similar. Specialized third-party companies, institutions, or individual researchers traditionally conduct market research.

Conversely, marketing research includes activities specific to a company’s marketing efforts. It’s usually conducted or overseen by an internal marketing department. It involves insights into product usage, pricing, and promotional strategies. 

What are research subject incentive programs? 

Research subject incentive programs compensate subjects in exchange for their time in the research activity. Rewards can be monetary or non-monetary. These initiatives encourage participation and high-quality responses during the research process. 

What are the different types of subject incentive programs? 

Marketers use a variety of different types of incentives for research subject incentive programs. Researchers may offer cash, gift cards, discounts, raffles, gear, and more.

Entries to win raffle prizes are also common but less effective than guaranteed compensation. Statista reports that recurring discounts, free samples, extended product warranties, and one-time coupons only appeal to up to 36 percent of the population. 

While these types of incentives have some appeal, they don’t attract the majority of potential respondents.

Why should researchers use subject incentives for customer surveys? 

Researchers increase the likelihood of customer survey participation by providing subject incentives. Incentives combat common challenges for researchers, including small sample sizes, low response rates, and ineffective data.

Subjects expect compensation for sharing their insights through research activities. Making incentives as clear and attractive as possible is critical to success. As the saying goes, time is money. 

How much are the rewards in subject incentive programs? 

The compensation for market research activities varies widely based on the supply of qualified respondents and the participant’s time and effort.

The National Business Research Institute (NBRI) suggests incentives ranging from $10 to $50 per respondent to improve market research response rates and data quality for smaller populations and achieve a representative sample.

NBRI differentiates strategies for larger populations of potential respondents (greater than 500). It recommends smaller incentives when capturing a representative sample is easier. 

Increasing the value of rewards improves participation when there aren’t enough potential respondents, but it isn’t necessary for large samples with high participation.

What type of market research incentives are the most effective? 

Several factors increase the effectiveness of market research incentives. Cash and its equivalents (checks, prepaid debit, and gift cards) are more popular than non-monetary rewards.

Even a small financial incentive improves success. NIH reports significant improvements in the outcomes measured—a common market research trend with compensation for subjects.

We know increasing the amount moves the needle, but the delivery method is also essential. Researchers commonly mail checks, and subjects may be wary of dealing with banking transactions.

Bulk gift cards are simpler and safer to distribute than cash. They offer transfer flexibility you don’t get with checks, making this approach attractive to the widest range of participants.

What types of market research are suited for bulk gift cards? 

Bulk gift cards are an excellent option for market researchers seeking high participation from large sample sizes.

This reward is suitable for improving response rates for both qualitative and quantitative research, including online surveys, mail-back questionnaires, focus groups, and clinical trials. They’re ideal for projects with low response rates or data quality concerns.

Besides being particularly effective for market research projects involving large-volume groups, bulk gift cards are ideal for researchers who need cost-effective incentive distribution.

Furthermore, this approach accommodates participants from locations with different currency requirements. 

What are the risks of using research incentives? 

Marketers frequently debate the bias risk of research incentives. There are ethical arguments suggesting incentives skew research data.

For instance, participants may be dishonest about their eligibility or rush through the questions without giving honest and accurate responses just for compensation. The same risks exist for research without incentives.

On the other hand, the risks don’t outweigh the positive outcomes. Experienced researchers mitigate concerns of bias or oversampling with quality control measures. 

Ultimately, the argument in favor of incentives comes down to three main points: 

  1. Gift cards are commonplace and generally expected
  2. Gift cards are a fair and valid method to thank subjects for their time
  3. Gift cards are the fastest way to satisfy sample size and quality criteria

Conclusion: Bulk gift cards for subject incentive programs

Offering PayPal, Venmo, Mastercard Prepaid and Visa Prepaid are all good choices when respondents expect cash-like options. Certain verticals, like health care and doctor panels will require these incentives. Simple, high-value offers, such as cash and bulk gift cards, should enhance participation significantly and are key to successful research subject incentive programs.

Gift cards are particularly effective for large-volume groups and projects requiring high participation rates. The benefits of using incentives to attract and retain participants overwhelmingly support their use, improving both response rates and data quality.

While there are many incentive options when conducting online surveys, focus groups, and polls—bulk gift cards benefit the subjects and researchers the most.

Are you ready to boost your participation rates with digital rewards? NeoCurrency is your doorway to bulk gift cards in over 140 countries for 20 global currencies. 

Request your demo to see how NeoCurrency will simplify your research subject incentive programs. 

Recommending articles (helpful links)

Increasing Participation of a Major Global Market Research Study

Posted on by Geoff Miller

If you’re going to be one of the biggest, most expansive global market research panel platforms in the world, you’re going to have to be able to incent respondents in places where delivering payments can be a little tricky, like Latin America.

How Do Businesses Use Bulk Gift Cards for Sales Promotions?

Posted on by Geoff Miller

How to use bulk gift cards in sales promotions

Promotions featuring brand rewards and gift cards offer an easy, efficient, and flexible way to drive sales and build your brand without discounting your product or service. 

In many instances, using bulk gift cards is the simplest and most cost-effective way to build a prize pool to excite your target and incentivize purchase, participation, or whatever behavior you want to achieve.

Here are a few strategies to help you think through the opportunities bulk gift cards offer for promotions.

What kinds of promotions use bulk gift cards?

Many different types of promotions leverage bulk gift cards because they offer flexibility and provide consumers with something they really want—especially when you build a prize pool with a lot of choices. Some of the most common promotions that effectively use bulk gift cards are sweepstakes, games, instant wins, rebates, incentives, and buy X get Y promotions.

Why would I use bulk rewards in a sweepstakes?

There are a lot of reasons to use bulk rewards in just about any sweepstakes promotion. You can use them to build excitement around a large, aspirational grand prize while providing many smaller prizes to increase the chances of your target audience actually winning something.

In many instances, the promotion can also be themed around your grand prize. This makes choosing the appropriate brand or brands you offer very important from a messaging standpoint. And that should drive the rest of your prize pool.

With bulk rewards, creating a prize pool with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of prizes available is easy. This makes more people feel good about participating and expands the demographic reach of your promotion, depending on the partners you choose. It depends on your budget, but offering prizes in the $1-$5 range is typically less expensive than you might imagine.

Sweepstakes are also popular with consumers because there is a very low barrier to entry. In many cases, they are automatically entered to win as soon as they purchase the key item of the promotion. No forms to fill out or receipts to send in. It’s simple for them—and you. Even redemption is easy since the prizes can be delivered digitally.

What is the benefit of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions?

The benefits of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions are fairly obvious when you think about the world we live in—people like games. And people love instant gratification. This is particularly true of young adult consumers but pretty much everyone expects whatever they want to show up now.

When you use bulk gift cards that can be redeemed digitally, not only will consumers know that they won, but they’ll be able to have their prize in their hands almost immediately. This is a huge benefit all around. For the consumers, they get their prize. And for you or your partners, the prize can be redeemed right away, driving immediate sales.

While it’s possible to have a game-based promotion or an instant win promotion, many times the two tactics work together. Think about the classic Monopoly® at McDonald’s promotion. There was an overall grand prize, a game board and pieces to collect, which drove repeat purchase. At the same time, many of the pieces also added an instant win which was typically a free food item available right in-store.

How exactly you structure your game or instant win promotion should be determined by what you and your partners are trying to accomplish.

Why would I use bulk gift cards as rebates or incentives in promotions?

The main reason to use bulk gift cards for rebates and other incentives is they essentially let you add value to your product or service without actually discounting it. And to be sure, once you start discounting your offering, it’s a slippery slope into the bargain bin and very difficult to rebuild that value in either price or brand equity.

One of the best types of bulk gift cards for rebates and incentives is prepaid cards. Essentially, they function as dollars off and give consumers the flexibility to spend it however they’d like. Of course, you can deliver messaging or structure your promotion to encourage consumers to spend that prepaid card with you—in-store or online.

These types of promotions are popular with many electronics manufacturers, wireless carriers, big box stores, and even national restaurant chains. Here is an interesting case study if you’d like to see how one mobile phone company executed its promotion.

Are bulk gift cards effective for buy/get promotions?

Bulk gift rewards can be very effective in a number of buy X get Y promotions, but you definitely need to understand your audience. The reason for this is buy/get tend to be more specific offerings than many of the other promotions we’ve discussed here.

As the name says, the name pretty much indicates why: if you buy this, you get that. In some ways, this could seem limiting. But it also gives you the opportunity to really hone in on a message and an offer you think will drive a very targeted audience to respond positively. It all comes down to the size of the prize, who it’s from, and the required purchase.

Of course, one popular way to keep the basic mechanics and strategies in place while providing more choice to the consumer is to offer prepaid cards again with a significant value.

How can NeoCurrency help you drive sales and build your brand?

One of the benefits of working with NeoCurrency to help develop an effective promotion leveraging digital bulk gift cards is we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already. Our catalog has rewards available from thousands of brands worldwide, from the big ones you’d expect to some very targeted ones unique to us.

1. Rewards planning

Many brands don’t get involved with promotions that offer bulk gift cards or virtual rewards simply because it seems difficult. People think it’s expensive, the process has too many layers to work through, and so on. It can be all those things, but that’s why we’re here.

We like to say that we’re marketers that just happen to provide rewards and prizes. With our long history of strategic rewards and prize pool planning, we can secure partnerships that normally take months to get approved much faster.

We simplify the entire process. We’ve negotiated everything—even creative challenges.

2. Prize pools

We have many different ways to help you develop a prize pool featuring bulk gift cards.   We can help you create something strategically focused on one brand or many, with as many prize tiers that fit your strategy.

Our experts are here to help you create an appropriate prize pool, regardless of whether your promotion is a local, regional, or global effort.

3. Fast and simple bulk gift cards

NeoCurrency’s wholesale pricing is fixed with no hidden fees. You can manage everything from our intuitive reward dashboard or simply integrate it with our single gift card API.

Partner with NeoCurrency for your next promotion

NeoCurrency’s global catalog of digital rewards for over 2000 brands provides plenty of opportunities for you to run a successful promotion, regardless of the kind of program you want to run. We’ve been doing this for a long time and would love to put our experience to work for you.

Request a demo to get all the details about how we’ll help you develop and execute your next promotion featuring bulk gift cards by leveraging an extensive variety of brand rewards.

Recommended articles (Helpful links)

Best Practices for Leveraging Brand Rewards in Promotions

Posted on by Geoff Miller

While there are a lot of ways to run a promotion, utilizing brand rewards offers an easy, efficient, and flexible option that drives sales and builds your brand while making your customers feel special and appreciated.

Plus, utilizing brand rewards in promotions doesn’t require a discount on your product or service. You’re adding value for the consumer without cheapening your brand. It’s truly a win-win.

Consider the following when choosing a partner for brand rewards.

What are the best criteria for choosing a reward or gift card?

Whether you call it a brand reward, gift card, electronic reward, or corporate gift card, we must consider five critical elements when creating a prize or prize pool: the purpose of the promotion, accessibility, target relevance, brand association, and brand recognition.

Why are you doing a promotion?

While developing a promotion to drive sales and build your brand is the main priority, it’s wise to think about overarching objectives.

Are you introducing something new? A new service? A new product? A new attitude? Whatever the reason, it should be the first thing on your list to figure out before you just go and pick a brand or brand to include. If you’ve been operating in the US but are expanding globally and want to make some noise—what brands would help?

Perhaps you’re changing lanes. Maybe you need to rebuild your reputation. Or you’re proud of who you are and how far you’ve come and want to promote it because you’re awesome. Whatever the goal, you should look at the brands that can help you accomplish it in the mind of your target audience.

Why is target relevance so critical to success?

Brand selection is key because the brands you partner with reflect on your company.

For example, brands like Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo have obvious similarities—but they create an opportunity for a brand like Axe body spray to play a role since it’s relatable to the target. You might even choose to include all of them to maximize the reach of your promotion while making it unique.

You know your audience. With all the data at our fingertips today, you know exactly how to reach them. But, for whatever reason, some companies come up with offers that make no sense and sometimes fly in the face of what they are trying to do. 

It’s crucial to think about your target, brand, and goals to ensure the reward pool you offer makes sense in the big picture. This consideration is one of the reasons NeoCurrency’s catalog has thousands of brands to choose from, from the big ones you’d expect to some very targeted ones unique to us.

How important is brand association in a promotion?

Brand association is an essential element in developing a promotion.

If your company is about simplicity, the brands you partner with in your promotion must reflect this. If they don’t, you run the risk of confusing or even alienating your audience. Plus, explaining why you associate with a particular brand can make messaging difficult.

Choosing a brand because it’s cool, popular, or something else doesn’t make sense if it doesn’t match your company’s DNA (unless you are looking to change your DNA or the perception of your brand).

Picking brands that don’t fit may work against you and could have the opposite effect on your goal.

Is it better to partner with well-recognized brands?

Partnering with well-recognized brands can offer some significant benefits, but there can also be some drawbacks.

The more well-known a brand is, the more likely people are to want to get a reward or gift card from it. However, it can be costly to work with. It comes with a long list of mandates that can be challenging to navigate, especially regarding logo usage, creative guidelines, and approval processes.

On the other hand, lesser-known brands typically offer better savings or some other incentive to entice you to partner with them. If no one’s heard of them, their brand may not help drive the sales you’re targeting.

Yet, there may still be benefits. If a brand aims to use your name to its advantage, it’s valuable to consider what you can gain from the negotiation, especially in terms of who covers the costs.

Is accessibility important when choosing a promotional partner?

Accessibility to easily redeem a prize is vital when using brand rewards as a promotional incentive. After all, the biggest reason gift cards and digital rewards work is because they’re so easy to use by the people who receive them.

NeoCurrency’s vast selection of brand rewards is overflowing with companies that are easily accessible online or in-store, making it easier for everyone to redeem their prize rather than let it waste away on a nightstand.

Best Practices for Promotional Rewards

How can NeoCurrency help you drive sales and build your brand?

One of the benefits of working with NeoCurrency to help develop your next promotion is we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already.

Rewards planning

Many brands don’t get involved with promotions that offer corporate gift cards or virtual rewards simply because it seems difficult. People think it’s expensive, there are too many layers to work through, and so on. It can be all those things, but that’s why we’re here; we simplify the entire reward process. We’ve negotiated everything—even creative challenges.

Prize pools

We have many different ways to run a promotion with brand rewards. You may want to create something strategically focused on one brand. So, you can offer various levels of rewards for that brand. Or, you could create a broader prize pool, which our experts can help you develop based on your goals and objectives, whether it’s a local, regional, or global effort.

Marketing strategy

There are also different ways to motivate customers. You might want to leverage an instant win element to build your promotion. We help with this! Or, maybe you want to keep them engaged for longer by developing a sweepstakes option where they can enter numerous times. We help with this, too!

Fast and simple bulk gift cards

Our wholesale pricing is fixed with no hidden fees. You can manage everything from our reward dashboard, which makes everything straightforward and intuitive, or you can simply integrate it with our single gift card API.

Partner with NeoCurrency on your next promotion.

NeoCurrency’s global catalog of over 2000 brands provides plenty of opportunities for you to run a successful promotion, regardless of your goals. We’ve been doing this for a long time and would love to put our experience to work for you.

Request a demo to get all the details about how we’ll help you develop and execute your next promotion by leveraging an extensive variety of brand rewards.

Recommended articles (helpful links)

The Power of Choosing the Right Gift Card API Provider

Posted on by Geoff Miller

By Eric Thiegs, Head of Strategy & Growth, NeoCurrency

Over my 25 years in the gift card industry, I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of the industry. One of the most impactful developments was the introduction of gift card APIs.

In fact, I had the opportunity to be involved in launching one of the first gift card APIs to service real-time eGift distribution to both end users and corporate clients for B2B use cases in the loyalty, reward, and incentive industries. The revolution was on.

That was over 10 years ago.

Gift Card APIs in the present

Since then, APIs and gift cards have continued to change in myriad ways. So have the providers and the solutions they offer. It’s a dynamic and competitive industry, and choosing the wrong partner can cost a lot more than money. After all, the whole reason to utilize gift cards is to reward, engage or incentivize in some way, an employee, customer, member, participant or prize winner. Poor execution or under-delivery can have the exact opposite effect on your business or reputation that you were looking and paying for—and possibly even lead to legal issues.

“It’s a dynamic and competitive industry,
and choosing the wrong partner can cost a lot more than money”

In order to help you choose the right digital reward provider for your needs, I’ve put a checklist together for buyers and decision-makers who are looking to find a gift card API provider and solution both domestically in the US, internationally—or both, that will work best for their needs. The list is based on my experience over the course of my career, as well as what we hear from our own clients here at NeoCurrency every day. Asking providers to share details on each of the below API attributes, features, benefits, use cases and pricing will help you select the best gift card API.

1. What reward content does their Gift Card API offer?

A gift card API is only as good as its content, and so the most important feature of the best reward APIs is the ability to offer a wide variety of brands that provide flexibility and choice. Ask your gift card provider if the following products can be supplied through their API integration.

  • Closed Loop Cards: Brands ranging from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Starbucks, etc.
  • Open Loop Prepaid Cards: VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc.
  • Cash-Like Rewards: PayPal, Venmo
  • Digital Currency Rewards: Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, etc.
  • Choose-your-own reward option: A universal reward link that allows the end recipient to select their reward/gift card
  • What, if any, other prizes, coupon codes, or digital content can be delivered in their API?

2. What currencies and countries are supported by their API?

Some clients need content relevant in one country. Others need eGift Cards with popular brands across a multi-country regions, an entire continent, or all of the above. Beyond the brands, it’s important to be able to deliver rewards in the appropriate currencies for many reasons. Understanding a partner’s capabilities domestically and across the globe is key, especially if there’s a chance you’ll need coverage in a new region as your platform grows.

3. How easy is the integration of their Gift Card API?

Most Gift Card APIs boast a suite of powerful features from seamless ordering and robust security options to easy, free sandbox access for testing. Getting access to all of the great features; however, can be a challenge. You’ll want to ask your provider about how quickly the API can be deployed and inquire if the API documentation is developer-friendly. You’ll also want to know if it’s easy to work with the provider’s team to launch sandbox testing and move quickly into production. A tech call with your potential provider will quickly tell you how collaborative, supportive, and trustworthy the team is behind the API solution. If they don’t want you to talk to their tech representatives, it’s probably a red flag.

4. What kind of account support do they offer?

On-going account support is a key attribute that sets many Gift Card APIs apart. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise-level corporate client, the reward API you use should grow with you. And you should have the support you need to answer questions and troubleshoot issues. Whether it’s new content, 24/7 self-serve account access, or strong customer service, you’ll want to ask your potential partner to outline, specifically, how they will support your account.

5. What are the KPIs of their Gift Card API?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the lifeblood of every good API. Ask your potential gift card provider for metrics around the up-time, load tolerance, scalability, and error rate of their API. Because let’s face it, if the API doesn’t work, it will hurt you. You’ll want to understand the platform’s reliability, downtime risk, and other performance attributes that may impact the API service.

6. What are the costs and fees associated with their API?

Not all Gift Card APIs use the same pricing structure. To get a transparent understanding of the commercial components, you’ll want to ask your provider about all fees associated with their API including the cost of the eGift or prepaid products sourced through the API, setup fees, transaction fees, delivery fees, email template fees, email delivery fees, SaaS fees, or hosting/service fees.

NeoCurrency Stacks up.

NeoCurrency delivers rewards and incentives all over the world.

Since I’m suggesting you ask all of these questions to any gift care API provider you are interested in talking with, here is a quick cheat sheet of how we would answer these questions at NeoCurrency.

1. What reward content does NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API offer?

NeoCurrency offers over 2,000 digital reward options from the biggest brands you expect, to more localized relevant brands that provide more unique offerings around the world—all through a single API integration.

2. What currencies and countries are supported by NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API?

NeoCurrency’s API content covers 140+ countries across six continents in 50 currencies. We offer a multi-currency, global API for clients who need just one country/currency or those that need access to digital rewards across the world. Among many other benefits, being able to redeem in so many currencies helps our clients save money on conversion fees they’d otherwise have to pay.

3. How easy is the integration of NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API?

The team here at NeoCurrency takes pride in our ability to quickly and easily support clients who are integrating into our gift card API. This includes:

  • A four-tier account service support structure
  • Fast access to sandbox account access with test funds
  • Same day/24-hour turn time on technical questions during integration
  • Fast production turn time

We’ve been grateful to have clients praise us on our integration support and turn-time. If APIs provide real-time access to rewards, the team supporting the integration should be as real-time as possible during the set-up, too.

4. What kind of account support does NeoCurrency offer?

Taking care of our clients is something we’ve prided ourselves on since we started the company. We focus relentlessly on providing:

  • Global multi-time zone account service support
  • 24/7 self-service access and control to your API via an account dashboard
  • Real-time, self-service reporting available 24/7
  • Full program assets available for download 24/7 (brand logos, T&Cs, card images, etc) within your dashboard
  • 4-tiered account service support structure that includes customer service, client success, executive and C-level contacts

5. What are the KPIs of their Gift Card API?

At NeoCurrency, we work hard to make sure your rewards are getting where they need to go, when you want them to get there. We are proud to consistently track in the very top of some critical industry KPIS including:

  • 99.999% uptime
  • 0.002% error rate
  • 1-2 second avg API response time

6. What are the costs and fees associated with NeoCurrency’s API?

We’re allergic to fees here at NeoCurrency which is why you’ll pay:

  • NO set-up fees
  • NO transaction fees
  • NO delivery fees
  • NO email template fees
  • NO email delivery fees
  • NO SaaS fees
  • NO hosting/service fees
  • NO minimums

Our pricing is simple. Our clients pay as they go for the reward content they order through the API. We have a global rate that can be sent for review, and pricing is accessed in the client’s API dashboard for viewing and reporting 24/7.

Summary

Today’s Gift Card APIs are very different than the ones I began implementing with clients 10 years ago. Your program deserves the best reward API provider; one that offers a comprehensive solution that not only meets but exceeds industry standards and offers you the scalability, security, content, and global reach to make your programs successful.

I hope you find this list to be helpful, and I’d be happy to answer any other questions you may have about the general gift card API marketplace or, specifically, our NeoCurrency reward API solution. All of us at NeoCurrency think we have something uniquely special here, and we’d love to share it with you in detail.