PERTH-based fintech Miconex has launched its Christmas campaign to boost the high street and encourage local shopping in Scotland.
Launched on the 7th November and due to end on Monday 28th November, Miconex’s Win Your Dream Christmas competition is offering one winner £1000 of Town & City Gift Cards. Entrants can enter the competition for free at winyourxmas.com.
The winner can select gift cards, physical or digital, up to the value of £1000 for one or more of the 17 Town & City Gift Card programmes in Scotland; Aberdeen, Arran, East Ayrshire, East Lothian, Edinburgh, Elgin, Falkirk, Glasgow, Glasgow West End, Inverness, Kirkcaldy, Kirkwall, Milngavie, Perth, Rural Scotland, Shawlands and St. Andrews.
Miconex’s campaign comes on the back of August 2022 research from the fintech showing that almost a quarter of consumers plan to choose gift cards this Christmas to reduce waste and avoid buying unwanted gifts.
The research, conducted with 1500 consumers, employees and organisations, reveals that over 90% of consumers are planning to buy at least one gift card for Christmas 2022, with 38% of people saying they’ll buy between 4 and 6 gift cards.
Support for local is deemed to be at an all-time high with the GCVA reporting that 31% of gift card purchases in August 2022 were driven by a desire to support local businesses. In Miconex research, over 90% of people said they’re keen to support local businesses this Christmas.
Awards have been rolling in for Miconex and its economy boosting gift card initiative in 2022. The fintech picked up the Social Impact award at the Scottish Financial Technology Awards in October and the Small to Medium Business of the Year at the 2022 GCVA Hall of Fame awards in September.
Colin Munro is the managing director of Miconex and said: “Our Win Your Dream Christmas campaign links into a number of gift card sector trends, and findings from our 2022 research. 46% of people say they are either slightly (35%) or significantly (11%) worse off. People are starting to feel the pinch and the last thing they want to do is waste money on gifts that friends and family don’t want or need.
“We found that participants use gift cards to ‘trade up’ and soften the blow on a product or experience that might normally be out of their reach. With a £1000 Town & City Gift Card, the winner can certainly ‘trade up’ on their Christmas gifts and experiences, whether that’s Christmas food, clothes, nights out or pampering.
“53% of consumers in our research said they’d spend a gift card on a treat. Giving someone a gift card is often the push they need to treat themselves. And that’s the thinking behind our Win Your Dream Christmas campaign. It’s giving a winner and their family the chance to treat themselves and have a really special Christmas.”
Pamela Elder, 45, from Edinburgh is keen to support local and avoid wasteful gifting this Christmas. Pamela said:
“Since covid, I have been trying to support local businesses a lot more. It has been such a struggle for the small businesses and there is so much competition from Amazon.
“The main reason I choose gift cards for others is the worry about getting the right gift for them. The second is avoiding waste. I wouldn’t want to waste money on anything that they wouldn’t want, or burden them with a gift that they don’t need. We bring more and more stuff into our homes all the time and I don’t want to give a gift for the sake of it. The third reason is the ease of buying a gift card.”
