At RGCA last month, the energy was unmistakable: gift cards have gone from side hustle to strategy.
The most innovative merchants aren’t just offering them — they’re using them to drive engagement, loyalty, and scale.
Here’s how the landscape is shifting - and how Runa is helping lead the change.
Corporate buyers have completely changed the game.
The days of bulk gift card orders for birthdays and holidays are behind us. Today, businesses are embedding gift cards into the fabric of their operations — powering:
And the scale is accelerating fast - from $315B in 2024 to a projected $629B by 2031. Gift cards have evolved from one-time gestures to critical business infrastructure — embedded, automated, and expected across every industry.
Runa helps you tap into this industry, offering a direct path into this new, high-growth B2B ecosystem.
With Runa, your gift cards are embedded into hundreds of different platform use cases - from loyalty rewards in fintech apps, saving incentives, disbursements platforms, and more.
Businesses globally are drawn to this diversity and flexibility of the Runa Network and when your gift card is part of that network, it becomes accessible in every one of those environments. That means more exposure, more transactions, and more recurring revenue.
Here’s the math: when people get to choose the reward they want, they spend more.
When recipients pick the merchant, currency, or reward that’s most relevant to them, redemption rates rise - and so does spend. On average, choice-based rewards drive 30–50% more value per card.
That $50 gift card? It often turns into a $75 purchase once customers add their own spend. And at scale, that impact compounds, driving meaningful revenue growth for merchants.
This isn’t just about preference; it’s about psychology. When people choose for themselves, they’re emotionally invested - turning a simple reward into a more powerful, higher-value transaction.
With Runa, your gift cards become part of that choice-driven experience. A banking customer might choose your card as their loyalty reward. A fintech user might pick it after paying a bill on time. A gig worker might redeem it as part of their payout.
Wherever people choose, your brand becomes the one they spend more with.
If it takes too long, it’s already too late.
We’re in an era where a few seconds of friction can kill redemption. One login too many, one code too complex — and boom, opportunity lost.
For merchants, that means your gift cards need to be effortless to find, claim, and use — because if customers can’t access them instantly, they’ll move on to someone else.
The leaders are doing it differently:
Runa’s mobile-first, wallet-friendly delivery turns “ugh” into “oh, that was easy.” That’s how you drive lift in redemption and loyalty - one second at a time.
Yes, AI is helping catch fraud - but that’s just the beginning. What really matters for merchants is how AI makes rewards smart, seamless and scalable.
Behavioral AI can spot a customer who’s about to churn and automatically trigger a personalized gift-card reward to bring them back, boosting redemption and loyalty rather than relying on broad-brush campaigns.
Using predictive analytics and real-time signals, AI can:
This isn’t a “future of loyalty” story. It’s happening now - and the merchants who are leveraging it are seeing higher redemption rates, deeper loyalty, and smarter use of reward budgets.
At Runa, we’re partnering with forward-thinking customers to bring these AI-driven reward experiences to life - turning data into engagement, and engagement into growth.
The merchants pulling ahead aren’t doing more. They’re doing it smarter:
Gift cards have evolved far beyond seasonal sales and promotions - they now move like money.
They show up in paychecks, creator platforms, loyalty ecosystems, and cross borders in seconds. The question isn’t “should we start using gift cards differently?” It’s “are we ready to thrive in a world that already is?”
At this year’s RGCA event, we loved being part of the conversations that brought this transformation to life. The event showcased how far the industry’s technology has come and reminded us that the real power of innovation comes from collaboration. When merchants, platforms, and partners work together, we create experiences that move faster, reach further, and deliver more value for everyone.
The future of gift cards isn’t about the cards themselves - it’s about the connections they create.
With Runa, you can embed your gift card into a borderless network of customers, industries and payout experiences. From global payouts to AI-driven personalization, Runa delivers the infrastructure that turns every reward into a moment of engagement, every transaction into loyalty, and every connection into growth.
Because the best results don’t happen alone - they happen when we build the future of rewards together.
Let’s go.