2024 Prepaid Holiday Preview

The 2024 holiday season may be hard to visualize in the heat of summer, but planning is well underway. In 2023, the holiday season displayed signs of recovery after a poor showing in 2022. The combination of the results from the past several years and the current economic indicators highlight the fickle nature of the critical holiday shopping season. In 2024, retailers, gift card providers, and other players in the ecosystem remember those lessons and understand how to operate the levers required to engage buyers appropriately and ensure a successful fourth quarter. 

Gift cards continue to be the preferred gift for recipients and gift buyers. Javelin research highlights that this preference creates continued engagement with gift buyers and recipients that extends revenue opportunities and provides for the ability to turn anonymous gift cards into distinct customer loyalty vehicles. The opportunities also extend beyond the consumer relationship and can be a pivotal addition to commercial sales opportunities and grow from the buyer to many recipient sales channels. Common among business-to-consumer and business-to-business opportunities remains the need to plan immediately for a well-strategized approach to the end of the year.

Key questions discussed in this report: 

• What macro-economic factors will influence holiday shopping? 
• How has prepaid product usage changed since last year and what lessons were learned in 2023? 
• How will shoppers approach the holiday season? 
• How should retailers and their gift card partners prepare for the season?

Companies Mentioned: 

Alvarez & Marsal, Amazon, Blackhawk Network, Fiserv, Goldman Sachs, Marcus, Mastercard, Moe’s, Outback Steakhouse, Starbucks, Target, Walmart