Gift cards make gift-giving easier for consumers and provide a valuable revenue stream for restaurants. Unfortunately, gift card fraud is a common and pervasive problem for merchants. According to a recent report by Mercator Advisory Group, fraud affecting digital gift cards alone represents a $950 million annual loss to the gift card industry – and that doesn’t account for physical card fraud.
A common form of fraud that targets the merchant involves criminals’ use of technology to “guess” the gift account numbers at lightning speed, enabling them to test many randomly generated numbers until they hit a valid card. When successful, this approach, called a “brute force attack,” is the first step in enabling criminals to access the value on compromised cards.
Any form of stored value is susceptible to fraud, including comp cards and stored value linked to a loyalty program.
There are some steps merchants can take to reduce fraud exposure, typically provided by the gift card provider. When choosing a provider, ensure the following safeguards are in place:
Avoidance of sequential numbers. While using sequential numbers when issuing gift cards seems like a logical thing to do, it vastly increases the potential for fraud. Sequential numbers allow criminals to make educated guesses about subsequent card numbers in a series. You’ll want a provider that randomizes the number sequence on the gift cards it issues in order to prevent criminals from deducing entire card numbers. […]
Today’s successful loyalty programs rely on personalization. As technology has expanded marketers’ capabilities through data collection, consumers now expect messages and rewards that match their own specific wants and needs.
Artificial intelligence enables marketers to identify patterns and idiosyncrasies among customers in a much faster, more efficient manner. A group of like-minded consumers that might have taken an entire marketing team months to identify can be spotted by a computer in a matter of minutes. Leveraged strategically, that can make a big impact in terms of incremental visits and revenue.
Here is a common example that at least one large brand used to drive astounding results: a 37% lift in visits and a 28% lift in spend from the targeted customers. […]
Subscriptions can be a boon to your bottom line, thanks to benefits like increased customer loyalty and higher per-customer purchase amounts, but if you don’t have the right technology to streamline it, achieving those advantages can become an ongoing headache.
In the same way that subscriptions can be tailored to each restaurant or c-store customer base, technology must be flexible enough to accommodate additions and modifications, like adding referral bonuses, sending membership prompts about renewals, swapping out perks, and other features.
This year’s Paytronix User’s Conference was unconventional, to say the least; but thanks to our incredible clients, the first-ever virtual PXUX was a success!
Thank you for bringing valuable feedback, nuanced insights and dynamic conversation to the event and making PXUX 2020 one for the books.
While we would have loved to have gathered, dined and shook hands with each and every one of our clients (PXUX 2021, perhaps?), we know some of you were not available and others might appreciate a recap of the conference’s events. Here is a high-level overview of some of the year’s biggest takeaways. […]
Gift cards make gift-giving easier for consumers and provide a valuable revenue stream for restaurants. Unfortunately, gift card fraud is a common and pervasive problem for merchants. According to a recent report by Mercator Advisory Group, fraud affecting digital gift cards alone represents a $950 million annual loss to the gift card industry – and that doesn’t account for physical card fraud.
Subscriptions can be a boon to your bottom line, thanks to benefits like increased customer loyalty and higher 
This year