Businesses spend a lot of time promoting gift cards.
They run seasonal campaigns. They invest in digital gifting. They print marketing material. They encourage staff to sell more gift cards at the point of sale.
But once the gift card is sold, many businesses lose visibility into what happens next.
- Are customers actually using their gift cards?
- Are certain gift card values more popular than others?
- How much unredeemed value is still sitting on active cards?
- And perhaps most importantly, how much value is about to expire?
For many businesses, the answers are buried in spreadsheets, transaction exports, and manually compiled reports. By the time the numbers are assembled, the opportunity to act has often passed.
Gift Card sales are only part of the story
Strong gift card sales can feel like a win.
But sales alone don't tell you whether your gift card programme is performing well.
A successful programme is one that balances several moving parts:
New card sales
Redemption activity
Outstanding balances
Expiry trends
Customer behaviour
Digital versus physical performance
Looking at just one metric can create a misleading picture.
For example, increasing sales might seem positive. But if redemptions are slowing, outstanding liabilities are growing, or customers are waiting months to use their cards, there could be underlying issues that deserve attention.
The questions every Gift Card Manager should be asking
If you manage or oversee a gift card programme, there are a handful of questions that matter more than any others:
Are gift cards selling?
Not just how many.
What values are customers choosing?
Are they buying more high-value cards, or are lower-value cards becoming more popular?
Are cardholders actually using them?
Understanding when and how cards are redeemed can reveal just as much as the initial sale.
Do customers spend their balance immediately?
Do they redeem online or in-store?
Do digital gift cards behave differently from physical cards?
How much value is still outstanding?
Unredeemed balances represent an ongoing liability that should be actively monitored.
Without visibility, it becomes difficult to forecast future redemption activity or understand programme performance.
What value is likely to expire?
Many businesses only notice expiring gift cards after the fact.
By then, any opportunity to remind customers and encourage redemption has already passed.
Forward-looking visibility is often far more valuable than historical reporting.
Is performance improving or declining?
Even when businesses collect the right information, comparing one period to another can be surprisingly difficult.
What is changing?
Which trends are emerging?
And where should you focus your attention first?
Moving beyond static reports
Gift card reporting should help you make decisions.
It should not require hours of analysis to find answers.
The most valuable reporting combines key performance measures with visual insights that help trends, opportunities, and risks stand out immediately.
At a glance, you should be able to understand:
- Sales performance
- Redemption behaviour
- Outstanding gift card liability
- Expiry exposure
- Customer usage patterns
- Channel performance
- Changes over time
When the right information is presented clearly, actions become obvious.
You know where to focus.
You know when to communicate with customers.
And you know which areas of your programme deserve further attention.
Introducing the new TX Gift Card Programme Dashboard
To help businesses gain a clearer understanding of their gift card performance, we've introduced the new TX Gift Card Programme Dashboard.
The dashboard brings together the key metrics, charts, and insights needed to understand how a gift card programme is performing today and where opportunities exist tomorrow.
From gift card sales and redemption activity through to expiry forecasting and outstanding liability, everything is available in a single, easy-to-navigate view.
Whether you're responsible for operations, finance, marketing, or programme performance, the dashboard helps turn complex transaction data into meaningful business insight.
See the dashboard in action
We've put together a detailed overview of the new dashboard, including screenshots, reporting examples, and explanations of every metric and chart.
You'll learn how to:
- Track gift card sales and top-up trends
- Monitor active cards and outstanding balances
- Analyse redemption behaviour
- Compare digital and physical gift card performance
- Forecast upcoming expiries
- Identify opportunities to increase redemption rates
- Export professional PDF reports for stakeholders
Explore the TX Gift Card Programme Dashboard here