Almost everywhere you go these days they offer gift cards. Gift cards are fairly new to the marketing industry. Previously gift certificates were implemented as the way for the store to generate revenues. Though certificates are still available in some places they are slowly being replaced by the magnetic strip on a small plastic card.
Something that the market has only seen over the past few years are reloadable gift cards. An idea that Tim Horton's has taken and run with.
The Tim Horton's gift card is a pre-paid, reloadable cash card that you can use to pay for purchases at participating Tim Hortons restaurants. It is the convenient and easy way to pay! Once your card is loaded, you can swipe it to pay for purchases both in-store and at the drive thru at participating locations. Each time you use the Tim Card, the amount of your purchase will be deducted from the balance remaining. The new balance will be displayed on the reader.
One thing that the Tim's Card has that many other reloadable cards does not have is the ability to be interacted with over the internet. Some of the options available with the Tim's Card online are:
- Protect your balance if your card is lost or stolen
- Reloading your card using a credit card
- Multiple card balance merge
- View your most recent transaction history
One interesting thing with Tim Cards is that they can be reloaded with a credit card. Bu using a credit card to reload the card you can set the card to be reloaded once a week, once a month or when the balance gets below a certain amount.
The Tim's Card is a great way for Tim Horton's to increase their revenue. How often do you wish for that coffee and you never have any change on you or you don't want to break that twenty. The Tim's Card solves all those problems.
Good choice of tpoic Gorvin. Tim's has been slow to join the Interac / electronic payment trend - I guess they feared it would slow down the serving process. Newer PIN and swipe technology coupled with the assurance of not having to deal with cash has brought them into the fold....
ReplyDeleteHow do I 'Multiple card balance merge'.
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