Gift card exchange firm Plastic Jungle Inc. hopes to boost transaction speed and available options through a partnership with prepaid products marketer InComm Inc.
Users of Plastic Jungle may sell and buy merchant gift cards, and it has relationships with 400 retailers. But the speed of the transactions vary, and Plastic Jungle CEO Bruce Bower tells PaymentsSource he wants to make all transactions operate the same, and faster.
“The more integrated we are into the merchant community, both through the processors and through their own systems, the better opportunity we have” to increase transaction speed, Bower says. “We’re very highly networked in the gift card community. We’re connected to most of the processors.”
But InComm is even more connected, so Plastic Jungle plans to work with the company “to extend the network characteristics of what we do,” Bower says.
The agreement, announced Feb. 9, will allow gift card issuers the ability to access Plastic Jungle’s consumer base and extend Plastic Jungle’s platform capability to InComm’s vast gift card partner base, including gaming, restaurants and traditional merchants. Gift card merchants can ensure their gift cards are used in full and accept a broad range of prepaid and digital currencies.
When selling a gift card, users enter the card’s code into a window on the “Sell Your Gift Cards” webpage, and Plastic Jungle electronically verifies the balance, a process that can vary by merchant. Plastic Jungle can pay the seller–minus a margin for revenue–in cash, through PayPal or with an Amazon credit, which comes with a 5% bonus. Plastic Jungle then either mails a physical card or emails a code for an e-card to the buyer, who gets the full amount.
Part of the reason for integrating with InComm is to add to the number of transaction sets Plastic Jungle can offer users, such as reloading card accounts and activating new cards, Bower says. Eventually, users may add the unwanted gift card’s value to other products, Bower says.
For instance, an InComm consumer can sell a gift card and then activate an InComm product, which may be one of InComm’s own open-loop prepaid cards, or the consumer can re-load an InComm product’s account.
“What we’re really doing there is providing this ability for InComm to tap into the $41 billion of unused value and direct it onto their own product set,” Bower says.
Bower hopes to benefit from InComm’s vast relations with partners in telecommunications, gaming and gift cards by increasing Plastic Jungle’s reach. “We’ll be able to leverage that network,” he says. “We’ll have better connectivity to the merchant partners. The process will be quicker, and there may be new cards that we can transact in because of that back-end integration.”
Increased options and transaction sets may mean increased caution for users, says one analyst.
Brian Riley, senior analyst and researcher for Needham, Mass.-based TowerGroup, says he’s leery of cards offered for odd denominations, such as $173, because if they are cards given by retailers in exchange for returned items, they may not have the protection afforded by Title IV of the 2009 Card Act.
But Plastic Jungle says it guarantees all its transactions.
Gift cards have evolved from in-person use to online use, including social media innovation. “(The partnership) brings Plastic Jungle into the big leagues,” Riley says.
Last year, a partnership with ChargeSmart Inc. enabled Plastic Jungle users to pay utility bills with unused gift card balances (
In 2010, InComm delved into social media and virtual gift cards with its purchase of GroupCard (
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