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Eighty percent of consumers believe open-loop gift cards make it easier to stick to their holiday budgets, suggest the results of a Network Branded Prepaid Card Association survey. The Montvale, N.J.-based trade group, which represents open-loop prepaid card issuers, processors and card networks, conducted the survey of 1,000 adults in October. The survey found that 17% of respondents plan to give more network-branded cards during the holidays this year than they had historically, 43% plan to give the same number and 22% plan to give fewer than they had in the past. Jennifer Tramontana, spokesperson for the association, tells CardLine this is the first year the association has done the survey. A gift card with a major card brand on it seems more secure and more useful to a consumer, says Juli Spottiswood, chair of the association's Media and Consumer Education Working Group. Retailer bankruptcies have made consumers more wary of buying merchant gift cards, and economic troubles make consumers more interested in the flexibility to spend the card for such necessities as groceries and gas, says Spottiswood, who is also CEO of Parago Inc., a Dallas-based loyalty-marketing company. In the survey, 85% of respondents agreed with the statement that network-branded gift cards provide consumers with flexibility in bad economic times. "We're talking about a grim economy, and even though gas prices have come down, budgets are tight," Spottiswood says.
