Gift Cards: A Booming Niche in the Marketplace

By any measure, gift cards are a booming business, one that could attract printers’ attention as a potential diversification path. “I don’t think it’s a huge stretch for many printers,” says Jeff Peters, Vice President and Managing Director at Datacard Ga-Vehren, an NPES member. He notes that a newcomer to the specialty would have to invest in high speed equipment to print and emboss the cards and encode data onto the magnetic strips. “For half a million dollars, you can be in this business,” he says. “These are not scary numbers for people accustomed to buying big presses.”