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The shop local and loyal revolution from Scottish fintech Miconex with Town and City Gift Cards and Mi Rewards

POSTED ON: 24/11/2020

Driving local economic recovery at a place level and encouraging people to shop local continues to be the mission for Miconex who has introduced 17 new Town and City Gift Card programmes in 2020, taking its total number of local gift card programmes to more than 50.

The first Town and City Gift Card programme launched in Perth in 2015, and over £2 million has been spent through the programmes since then, with significant increases in recent months. The Town and City Gift Cards scheme picked up the award for best use of prepaid at the Incentive Awards in September.

Town and City Gift Cards are branded to a particular town, city or region. As prepaid Mastercards, the multi-venue gift cards work like local currency that can be spent on everything from retail and hospitality, to leisure and services.

Key developments for the Town and City Gift Card schemes include the launch of two new programmes for Ireland, in Ballinrobe and Drogheda, assisted by the creation of an Irish subsidiary for Miconex. Plus, new programmes in Northern Ireland, Scotland, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire and the South, including an Island scheme for the Isle of Wight.

To support the rapid expansion, Miconex developed a new Town and City Gift Cards website which enables customers to buy gift cards for towns and cities around the UK in one place and allows the fintech to provide a fully managed service that includes the technical aspects of payment and redemption, and fulfilment of online orders.

Chief Executive of Our Bury St Edmunds Mark Cordell said:

“We like products that are centralised that don’t require a massive input of resource from us as a BID, because there are only three of us and we don’t have that time available. The new Town and City Gift Cards website has centralised the day to day operations like fulfilment of orders within Miconex. It worked for us as a programme.”

With Christmas parties being off the table for 2020, Miconex and its places have worked on corporate orders for its local gift cards.

In a further effort to support BIDS and the places it works with, Miconex launched its Great Town and City Christmas Quiz in December to encourage people to shop local. The Christmas quiz offers players the chance to win a £1500 gift card for their choice of the 50 plus active Town and City Gift Card programmes in the UK and Ireland. People can enter at: https://townandcitygiftcards.com/christmasquiz/ before the closing date of the 18th December 2020.

Residents from places all around the UK and Ireland, whether they have an active Town and City Gift Card programme or not, are encouraged to compete against each other for a chance of being crowned the cleverest Christmas town or city of 2020.

Miconex also supports places with loyalty programmes through Mi Rewards, which started its life in Perth in 2018 and expanded across the UK in 2020 with launches in Guildford, Fleet, Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Enniskillen. Customers register with Mi Rewards, link their existing payment cards, and receive rewards every time they use their payment card in a participating local business, without the need for a separate loyalty card.

In 2020, Miconex expanded from its UK base to deliver gift card programmes in Canada and North America through Miconex Inc., in association with international payments technology solutions provider EML Payments. Programmes include Downtown Lynchburg, Downtown Mesa, Downtown Billings, Cordova and Downtown Peterborough. September saw the launch of Miconex’s first Canadian project, the Canada’s Food Island Gift Card for Prince Edward Island. This became a $1.6 million project within 6 weeks.

To find out more about how Miconex can support your town or city to lock in local spend and drive loyalty, contact managing director Colin Munro: info@mi-cnx.com

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