Digital Cards Gain Favor While Physical Ones Still Dominate

With the holiday shopping season drawing closer, consumers are readying their gift card purchasing plans. Twenty-eight percent of consumers plan to purchase digital gift cards for recipients this holiday season, compared with 25% in 2023, according to a Bank of America Corp. and TSG survey of 1,007 consumers.

But that is not impeding consumers’ desire for physical gift cards. Seventy-five percent plan to buy one this holiday season, a significant increase from 62% saying so in the 2023 holiday season. Most consumers—87%—intend to buy some form of gift card this holiday season, the same as in 2023.

Gift cards from large retailers are the most common, with 88% purchasing them, followed by food and beverage at 78%, and grocery at 65%. Other popular merchant categories are home improvement, gas, health and beauty, and movie theater.

Most gift cards will be purchased in November with 35% starting this month and 27% in December, with November experiencing the most activity likely because of numerous sales that month. Only 13% plan to start their gift card shopping in October.

Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are the most likely to buy a gift card, with 93% choosing any format. Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, and the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945, at 87% each were next, followed by Generation Z, those born in 1997 and later, at 86%. Eighty-five percent of Baby Boomers, born from 1946 to 1965, intend to buy some form of gift card this holiday season.

BofA and TSG, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments advisory firm, also found that 75% of consumers who received a gift card in the 2023 holiday season had used at least half of the gift card amount by Feb. 14.