From Discovery to Delivery: What Separates Top Digital Gift Card Programs

Gift cards continue to be one of the most resilient and valuable product categories in retail, and the latest research shows that their importance is only growing. According to new findings from NAPCO Research and Blackhawk Network (BHN), the U.S. and Canada gift card market is projected to reach $311.7 billion by 2029, reinforcing gift cards’ role as both a revenue driver and a customer acquisition tool.

A recently produced infographic from NAPCO Research and BHN includes insights from two benchmark reports covering 100 digital gift card programs and 50 digital gift card malls. It highlights what separates leading gift card programs from the rest of the market. One theme stands out clearly: the best-performing gift card programs make the experience easy to find, easy to buy, and easy to send.

Related to making their gift cards easy to find, merchants are performing well in one key area — search. The average score for Google search visibility across evaluated programs exceeded 100 percent (bonus points were available), suggesting that many retailers have effectively optimized for gift card discovery. However, the data reveals a major missed opportunity elsewhere. Retailers scored less than 5 percent on average in social media marketing, indicating that most brands are underutilizing social platforms to promote gift cards, even though consumer demand is strong.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has reported gift cards as the most requested holiday gift every year since 2007. Yet despite this consistent demand, many merchants are not fully aligning their digital strategies with how consumers want to discover and use gift cards today.

Ease of delivery is another clear differentiator among top-performing programs in our assessment. Nine of the top 10 digital gift card programs offer SMS delivery, compared to roughly 40 percent of merchants overall. As shoppers increasingly expect immediacy and mobile-first experiences, SMS delivery has emerged as a critical capability rather than a “nice to have.”

The research also points to an underdeveloped but meaningful opportunity around self-use gift cards — i.e., customers purchasing gift cards for themselves. Only a handful of programs explicitly optimize the experience for this behavior, yet five of the top seven digital gift card malls included a self-use path. Only four additional merchants across the entire evaluation did so. This suggests significant upside for retailers willing to rethink gift cards not just as gifts, but as flexible spending and loyalty tools.

Taken together, the findings underscore a clear message for retail leaders: gift cards are no longer a passive line item. They're a strategic digital product that benefits from thoughtful merchandising, marketing, and experience design. Retailers that invest in visibility beyond search, modern delivery options like SMS, and clearer use cases such as self-use are better positioned to capture both seasonal and year-round demand.

For retail executives looking to benchmark their own digital gift card programs and uncover actionable insights, the full infographic and supporting research provide a clear road map for where to focus next.