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As the Christmas holiday shopping season nears, Hallmark Cards Inc. is readying a new greeting card line that is available with digital gift cards.
Kansas City, Mo.-based Hallmark says the launch of its Gift Card Greetings Web site enables consumers to purchase a physical greeting card that comes with a QR code for the recipient to scan and load a digital gift card. Christmas cards, with some 1.3 billion units purchased annually, are the most popular seasonal greeting cards, says the Englewood, Colo.-based Greeting Card Association.
Gift card specialist InComm Payments is supplying the Web technology behind Gift Card Greetings with its The Gift Card Shop, which Atlanta-based InComm launched in 2021.
To send a digital gift card-enabled Hallmark greeting card, a consumer visits the Gift Card Greetings page on the Hallmark Web site or a Hallmark retailer and selects a card, which sells for $4.99. The sender then scans the QR code inside the card, which opens an online digital card store. The sender selects a gift card and the amount. The card is then ready to send to the recipient who will scan the code with her smart phone. She also scratches a section below the code to reveal a four-digit PIN to input on the phone to redeem the gift card.
Hallmark launched a similar service in 2023 with Venmo, PayPal Holdings Inc.’s social-based P2P wallet. Hallmark says more than 100 brands are available in the Gift Card Greetings offering.
Cards are available for multiple occasions, such as birthdays, weddings, and thank you cards
