BY LAJU ARENYEKA

The average Nigerian is nervous when he needs to use a gift card. The reasons for this aren’t far fetched. What if the store doesn’t recognize the card? What if the organization that issued the card is not trust worthy? How can one be so sure?

It is as a result of this sort of apprehension that SureGifts has partnered with ITEX Integrated Systems, a leading payment terminal service provider (PTSP) in Nigeria, to develop a gift card application that will run on over 30,000 of its POS devices deployed across Africa.

SureGifts partners with merchants across several sectors and retails gift cards redeemable at their locations. The redemption process of gift cards is now as simple as possible.

Recipients of gift cards simply need to visit the merchant, make their purchase, enter their voucher code into the POS devices, and have their receipts printed instantly.

With this development, SureGifts can now aggressively expand its merchant base and offer gift cards that are redeemable for virtually anything that is giftable. Merchants can now also more easily accept gift cards and boost their sales. Globally, gift cards have been around for decades.

The market has expanded consistently, and the US National Retail Federation estimate that the gift card market will exceed $200bn in the US alone by 2021. The product is still mostly unexploited in Africa.

SureGifts launched in January 2014 and has seen a steady growth in acceptance since. Their corporate page shows patronage from some major international brands as well. The company currently retails gift cards for brands like Samsung, Mothercare, Lego, Sweet Kiwi, and online merchants like Jumia, Fashpa and Ellamatthew.