Facebook offers physical gift cards for selected retail stores - reifmontering

Facebook users bum now say "charge information technology," with a unaccustomed corporal gift card the social network is rolling proscribed, which people can use up to produce purchases in brick-and-mortar retail stores.

facebook gift card — Facebook's mockup of its physical gift card.

The intersection, called the "Facebook Plug-in," is a plastic, reusable card that users can give their friends to redeem at four different partner companies: Jamba Juice, Chromatic Garden, Sephora, and Target. Facebook describes the product as "a new type of gift card," in a blog post announcing its launch.

Hera's how the Facebook Carte du jour is designed to work: A person can blue-ribbon a gift for a friend along the site's Gift Card game & Extremity category to embody redeemed at one of the affiliated stores. After the user chooses the amount of the gift, the friend is notified and receives the card in the chain armor a few days later. When the identity card arrives, the friend can use it at the retailer that was chosen for the gift sum.

If the chosen retail merchant were Target, for example, the person doing the giving can choose 'tween, say, a US$10, $50, or even $100 value for the menu. Erst the recipient receives it in the mail, it can be utilised at any topical Target entrepot, Facebook aforementioned, although it wish not work at Target.com or Target Mobile. Company officials were not immediately available to comment on whether the card would work with websites of the other stores involved in the plan.

One card, several accounts

Likewise, because the carte du jour is reusable, it can store multiple gifts from multiple stores. That means that first-time gifts arrive physically in the mail American Samoa the card itself, but so advanced gifts are drunk instantly, electronically, to the same wag, the company says. If there are multiple balances on the card, for each one balance is dedicated to the retailer associated with the gift, Facebook says.

In other words, a person can have a gift balance of $25 at Target area, $10 at Jamba Juice, and $40 at Olive Garden. The balances are non cross-unfocussed among the stores. Card holders can view their balances on Facebook from either their phone or screen background. Facebook volition also send an instant notification to recipients' phones whenever the balances deepen, the company says.

Facebook did non provide details on whether additional vendors would eventually be included in the program. It is also unclear how the card will be sent to recipients who have non provided their posting address to the site, or whether there would glucinium any different methods to distribute the product for the great unwashe who do non wish to share their treat with Facebook.

Facebook has long promoted digital gift card game for a variety of services. Survive year, its Gifts service moved on the far side digital options to oblation sale and actual delivery of physical items.

Migrating from realistic

Those questions aside, the Facebook Card is a well behaved product that could help the company move beyond the practical environs where it largely operates now and into the physical world, same Puneet Mehta, CEO of location-supported app developer MyCityWay.

The wag could Pb to payment models beyond gifting, such as microfinance, wherein a person could use Facebook to transport money to, say, an entrepreneur in South Africa, he said.

And Facebook's mobile app could eventually bypass the take for the gift wag. "Eventually, users power be able to carry money just on the app itself," Mehta said, akin to a "mobile wallet."

Company executives were not really optimistic on Facebook's Gifts mathematical product during the firm's Jan 30 fourth-poop earnings call, so the timing of the poster launch is interesting. The company sought to "temper all but-term expectations happening tax revenue" approach from areas so much as Gifts or search, for illustration, and instead focus attention on its mobile political platform, Chief operating officer Mark Zuckerberg said.

Facebook said the card will roll gradually to people in the U.S. The company did not say whether the card would cost available in other countries.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's email address is zach_miners@idg.com