How Do Gift Cards Work? A guide to find the best gift cards in New Zealand
Love them or loathe them, gift cards are an intrinsic part of gift giving in the 21st century. With many services including Amazon, Netflix, Steam and so many more services now having gift cards available there comes a point where you have to ask, what is the best gift card? What is the gift card that is going to get me the most bang for my buck and give the most value per dollar for the person I’m getting a gift card for. In this blog, we'll look at what a gift card does, how they actually work and how you can get the most out of any gift cards that you buy. After all, if you're getting someone a gift card, regardless of the type, you want to ensure you’re getting them something they want as well as getting good value for money.
How Does a Giftcard Work?
When buying a gift card its important to know your gift card works in order to ensure you’re not just throwing away your money in addition to knowing what you are going to get. How a gift card works is by basically "promising" to spend money with a service or business at a future date by pre paying or loading money onto a gift card. This money will normally be in brackets of $10 or $20 dollars, but most gift cards will let you load custom amounts based on the type of gift card. You can then go spend this gift card as if its normal money in the online or physical stores specified by the card. Gift Cards typically have an "expiry date" where the money on the card "expires" if it isn’t used. This can be anywhere between 6 and 24 months after which point the company you buy from essentially "keeps" the money that you were going to spend with them, because you didn’t spend it within the period you "promised" to. gift cards.
How do I check my Gift Card Balance?
Most gift cards give you a way to look up how much is left or when they expire by. The expiry date as well as instructions on how to check the balance is typically written on the back of the card itself or on the cardbaord tag the cards came on. For warehouse giftcards you can check the balance as well as purchases made directly on our site by visiting this page. Card balance tools will vary by provider so it important to check your balance when activating your card to ensure the correct amount is on the card.
The Different Types of Gift Cards
As previously mentioned, not all gift cards are the same. It is important to know what kind of gift card you are getting when you buy, to ensure you're not picking up the wrong variant of the right card. The three main types of gift card you can buy are:
- Currency gift cards
- Virtual Currency Cards
- Subscription Gift Cards
What is a Currency Gift Card?
A currency card like a Prezi Card or warehouse gift card functions the same as we described above. You exchange your money for the same value in store credit or banked credit to the value that you purchased. These cards typically come with a purchase fee for using the service (with the exception of the Warehouse Gift Card) and then the card is valid to the value of what you bought until it expires. Values of these gift cards can be anything between $10 to $500 dependant on the card and these can be used at a variety of physical & virtual store fronts.
What is a Virtual Currency Gift Card?
A virtual currency card allows you to buy money for use in one of many virtual stores online or in several games. Virtual currency cards exist for both games and prominent storefronts with gift cards for Google Play, iTunes, Steam and so much more offering a purchasable virtual currency for you to add to their virtual storefront. This term can also cover Fortnite gift cards or Roblox Gift Cards as Vbucks (Fortnite) and robux (Roblox) are a commonly exchanged virtual currency that you buy cards for in store. So, when you boot up the game, you have the amount of virtual currency you paid for on the card available to you in the store for cosmetics, consumables and the like. Other gaming gift cards like IMVU, League of Legends and RuneScape let you buy gift cards for money and virtual currency for use in the game, unlike time cards which we will explain next.
What is a time gift card?
Time gift cards and subscription gift cards are one and the same thing. Typically, these are used to buy a license or access to a product or service for a limited time. These can appear in various formats, like a Norton 360 Antivirus card or Microsoft Office 365 license as well as for game time for Xbox Live or Xbox Game Pass services and online games like Runescape. Normally these gift cards have a set value and tend to have long expiry periods so getting one or more licenses at a time isn’t a bad idea. Especially if there’s a price increase inbound, as was recently announced for the Xbox Game pass.
What is the best Gift Card?
So, after all of the above you might be asking yourself what is the best gift card you can get? After all, for most people, gift cards are a sign that you gave up and didn’t know what to get them. In some cases, they’re right, after all. No one is asking for an office 365 gift card for Christmas or their birthday. But if you have someone in your house that’s a gamer, especially if they’re into their old school RuneScape, Xbox or Roblox then a gift card is a great middle ground to allow them to get something they actually want, when you don’t know the ins and outs of gaming. Having something like a Warehouse Gift Card is also great if you want to put some money aside for Christmas or a birthday or even as a last-minute gift for those times when you forget an occasion. Likewise, if you have a family member or friend that’s impossible to shop for, a gift card is the best way to show you care when they are picky and in some cases they often prefer to make the purchase themselves.
Whatever the occasion, if you want to shop the range of some of the best gift cards in New Zealand. The Warehouse offer a comprehensive selection of gift cards of all the varieties explained above to suit a range of purposes. Gift card variety does differ between in store and online, so be sure to visit your local Warehouse store and browse their range of gift cards avialable if you cant find the right gift card online.
