Online Reporting

It is difficult to publish accurate, timely reports with traditional voucher systems. This function often cannot be carried out until after a cut off period and all reconciliation administration completed.  It is not uncommon for organisations to have limited knowledge of their level of exposure to traditional vouchers in the market at any time.

Gift Card reporting is on line and real time, thus the merchants and head office have access to reports at all times, as the system is fully automated, the data is instantaneously transmitted to the transaction hub and the organisation can now know exactly what their exposure is at all times.

Traditional Voucher  compared to  Giftcard system

Residual Value

Vouchers

• If not entire value expended change required either smaller denomination vouchers or cash. To be processed and reconciled.

Gift Cards

• No change given, residual remains as credit on gift card.

Exposure

Vouchers

• Difficult to maintain transparency of level of exposure

Gift Cards

• Level of exposure completely transparent at all times

Fraudulent Use

Vouchers

• Difficult to eliminate fraudulent vouchers and fraudulent use of vouchers

Gift Cards

• Fraudulent use and fraudulent cards are eliminated

Reporting

Vouchers 

• Administrative function, available after reconciliations.

• On line, real time reporting of all activity.

Security

It is widely accepted by retailers that fraudulent vouchers redeemed are virtually unavoidable and now considered a cost of business.  When fraudulent vouchers have been redeemed it is either after the sales process that this is discovered, hence too late or if investigated, they are often presented by genuine customers who have inadvertently received a fraudulent voucher.

In this instance it is desirable to redeem the voucher rather than upsetting genuine customers. Conversely, the cost of investigating fraudulent vouchers outweighs the value of the transaction.  With the sophistication of digital scanning and printing technologies it is difficult to fraud proof traditional vouchers.  

The process of procuring traditional vouchers, no matter how diligent the suppliers, has plenty of opportunities for traditional genuine vouchers to escape into the market fraudulently.  Fraudulent use can be eliminated with Gift Cards – The cards are worthless until activated.

All transactions can be reported and traced instantly and easily.  The cards themselves have a unique number range for each card type, this has to be activated by the EFTPoS network and is only activated to the relevant merchants terminals for each card range. The balance on the cards is managed by the stored value system.

Each transaction sends the data to “the host” for verification that the “card account” has enough credit for the transaction. If not the transaction is declined at Point of Purchase. This is the same process as credit card or EFTPoS purchases.