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The Gift Of Abstraction: The History of the Gift Card
Pondering why the electronic gift card, which is newer than you think, took over the retail industry so quickly. Who had it first, anyway?
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
You ever run into a situation where you return something to a store, and the only option that you have available to you is to receive the balance as a gift card?
Certainly, this is a frustrating state of affairs, especially if it’s a store you don’t particularly like. Despite that, the gift card — a retail phenomenon that came out of nowhere slightly more than two decades ago to redefine our relationship with gifts — has become a hugely popular industry.
Read on for the history of the gift card. Let’s put an extra layer between us and our money.
$46B
The amount that U.S. adults spent on gift cards in 2016, according to the research firm Packaged Facts. The firm notes that while $28 billion of the reported total was spent on gift cards they gave to others, another $11 billion was spent on themselves, while $7 billion came from their employers.
