Loyalty and gift cards
Driving local and loyal spending with the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card
In 2021, Scotland’s Towns Partnership partnered with Miconex, to launch of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card. The trailblazing Gift Card continues to go from strength to strength, with an extraordinary +£16m locked into Scotland through the initiative.
Mastercard backed and available as both physical and digital cards, the Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards can only be spent in person with registered shops, restaurants, salons, attractions, hotels and services, showcasing the local offering and ringfencing spend into local communities. Around 7,000 businesses across Scotland accept the card, driving footfall and spend to a range of local businesses. The Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards offer recipients a wide range of businesses to spend, with both local businesses and the big brands included, offering unbeatable local choice and unrivalled support for local.
The card encourages local and loyal shopping and are typically redeemed within 1-3 months, driving specific visits to the high street with an estimated 3 visits per card. Over 90% of people spend over the value of the card on redemption. From a loyalty perspective, 50% of people try out a new business with their Gift Card, giving the business an opportunity to bring new customers through the.
The Scotland Loves Local Gift Card is popular for both consumers to buy as gifts throughout the year, and for organisations to use as rewards, incentives and service user support. A wide range of Scottish organisations are supporters of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card, including Malmaison, Cernach Housing Association, The University of Dundee, Port of Aberdeen, Scottish Care and the NHS.
In 2024, the digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Card launched, which can be added to digital wallets, ready to ‘tap to pay’ with local businesses. With this technology, there is the ability to send digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards to multiple recipients on a specified date/time – a huge benefit to corporate organisations wishing to minimise administration and easily reward their people with a Scotland Loves Local Gift Card.
With the advent of digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards, disbursal of digital funds is possible at scale across Scotland for the first time, for a wide range of use cases, making supporting residents, and supporting local, simple. In 2022, as the cost-of-living crisis took hold, 6 local authorities used the physical Scotland Loves Local Gift Card to distribute LACER funding, providing targeted support for businesses and communities. With the arrival of digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards, the ability to distribute physical cards to large numbers of people has been developed with the option to do this digitally, and in doing so, unlocked new potential for the initiative to drive positive change in Scottish communities.
Miconex are founders of the Town & City Gift Cards initiative and core partners of Scotland’s Towns Partnership on Scotland Loves Local Gif Cards. Miconex’s Town & City Gift Cards programs are active in 200+ places globally, almost 40 of which are in Scotland. Over 27,000 businesses are part of Miconex’s programs, with over £69 million in local spend delivered to date. Miconex has relationships with several leading reward and recognition platforms including Tillo, allowing corporate firms to easily choose Town & City Gift Cards for their teams.