One card to rule them all

Win a Debbi Card package for your business, courtesy of Flying Squirrel and NZBusiness

The winner will choose from either:
Package A: Free design and set up of your own corporate branded gift cards, plus 100 cards ready to load. Remember, your new company gift/reward card is accepted at any of the 140,000+ EFTPOS retail outlets throughout New Zealand.
Or:
Package B: 600 pre-printed gift cards ready to load. Delivery via post in New Zealand is included as part of the prize offer (delivery is included on all Debbi Card product pricing).

TO GO IN THE PRIZE DRAW: 
Email [email protected] with the answer to the following question before April 30th:

“How many EFTPOS retail outlets in New Zealand can accept the Debbi Card?

The prize value is $2000. Note that the packages offered do not include any funding loaded onto the cards. For further details on Debbi product options contact [email protected] 

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For business owners put off by cumbersome gift voucher schemes that tie up staff time and create unnecessary expense, there’s a new card in town that promises to solve all their problems, and its name is Debbi.

Launched by a group of self-professed industry innovators under the banner of Flying Squirrel, Debbi is described as “the next evolution in pre-paid EFTPOS card functionality, designed for use by any business or association that needs to safely and efficiently make reward/funds available to internal or external customers, in a risk-free and seamless process”.

Flying Squirrel GM Rhys Curtis says the card was born out of necessity. “Having worked within the incentive and loyalty space for over ten years, the operational impacts when purchasing and distributing large volumes of vouchers for a business was apparent.

“In creating the Debbi range of products, we’ve achieved our goal of providing an innovative product that offers our clients operational efficiencies while offering the actual Debbi Card or Voucher user more flexibility and significantly more choice than ever before.”

So how exactly does the card function?
Debbi works rather like a bank-issued EFTPOS card in store, but removes all retail barriers faced by comparable gift products, by being accepted in any retail outlet that has an EFTPOS/Paymark terminal. It gives the card recipient more choice by offering 140,000 local merchants to choose from; to purchase what they want, when they want it.

John-Paul McLean, Flying Squirrel’s managing director, explains that the Debbi Card’s function can be tailored to a business’s requirements. “Small and medium sized businesses can now also look at the possibility of employing branded gift cards as part of a loyalty, reward or gift card strategy produced in smaller print runs – which puts them on an even playing field with their larger competitors.

“Any merchant with an EFTPOS terminal can accept the card, from a dairy to a department store,” says McLean. “This flexibility is an important consideration for those members of incentive programs who may not live in main centres and have no access locally to mega-style retail brands.”

Safety first
The creators of the Debbi Card say it’s safer than a standard gift card. Debbi products use an online activation process using a pre-agreed activation code. Once the card has been activated online it can only be used with the PIN number set by the legitimate card owner. If it is stolen or lost, the card is useless to anyone else.

Debbi Cards can also be distributed via traditional mail rather than courier. This means big savings for businesses like incentive companies that distribute large volumes of cards, as the cost of distribution is built into the card supply cost.

“When you’re sending out large quantities of cards over peak trading periods, staff impact can be a large an unrecoverable cost,” says McLean, adding there’s been positive feedback from potential wholesale partners around the potential of ordering and delivering large card volumes with no additional staff resource required to do so.

McLean says the card has endless possibilities – not just when it comes to reward programmes such as cashback and rebates, but also with applications such as managing petty cash and domestic staff travel purchases.