By Dominic Bayley

SYDNEY: Danks Australia has forged an agreement with electronic gift card services company Retail Decisions for gift cards to be sold in Danks owned stores across Australia.

Danks joins a growing list of blue-chip companies, including Coles, Woolworths, and Virgin Mobile who have already setup electronic gifting products. The decision comes at a time in the market when the value of prepaid gift cards purchased in Australia has already passed $1 billion.

Gift cards offer Danks customers a convenient option for gift ideas by allowing customers to purchase a predetermined amount of credit, which is then spent by a recipient at a later date.

“Gift cards have been growing in popularity for several years and consumers now prefer purchasing gift cards for their favourite stores,” said Con Dekazos, Danks national merchandise and marketing manager.

“Compared to the old style paper vouchers, gift cards are much easier to carry, easier to pay for goods and easier to redeem,” Dekazos said.

The cards are also expected to benefit the company by raising company sales revenue and improving the reporting and management of information and preventing fraud.

Additionally, the gift cards will act to increase the company’s operational control over retail businesses, by the provision of a web based management interface that removes responsibility by the merchant for maintaining gift cards and gives complete visibility to Danks head office.

“Danks now has a modern consumer offering compared to our previous paper based vouchers, with better merchandising and branding opportunities. This provides a more consistent look and feel and is simpler for staff to manage. In addition, it provides significant operational cost savings around security, administration and fraud prevention,” said Dekazos.