Gift cards and incentive cards are no longer just seasonal add-ons or last-minute gifting tools. They have become one of the fastest-growing prepaid digital products globally, driven by digital distribution, mobile wallets and corporate incentive programmes. What was once treated as a low-risk marketing instrument is now a material revenue stream. And as value moves faster and at greater scale, the question for revenue and payments leaders is simple: are controls keeping up with growth?
A market expanding at pace
The global gift card and incentive card market continues to show strong momentum. Current projections estimate the market will grow at approximately 7–8 % cagr over the coming years, reaching well over usd 800 billion before the end of the decade. Digital gift cards are growing even faster. Some forecasts place digital formats on a 13 %+ annual growth trajectory, fuelled by instant delivery, mobile-first shopping and integration with wallets and loyalty platforms. These numbers matter. They reflect not just higher transaction volumes, but increasing amounts of stored value moving instantly through digital channels.
Digital first changes the revenue equation
The shift from physical to digital gift cards has reshaped how consumers buy, store, and redeem value. Digital cards are now embedded into apps, loyalty programmes and online checkout flows, making them easier to distribute and faster to monetise.
For businesses, this creates clear upside: upfront cash flow, repeat engagement and richer customer data. But it also compresses the time window for detection and response when something goes wrong. Once a digital gift card is issued or redeemed, recovery options are limited.
Where growth attracts abuse
As digital gift cards scale, they have become a prime target for fraud and abuse. Account takeovers, automated card testing, social engineering and resale fraud are increasingly common, especially where friction is low and controls are static. This creates a tension many teams recognise. Adding friction protects revenue but hurts conversion. Removing friction improves customer experience but increases exposure. The reality is that traditional, rules-based fraud controls struggle in this environment. They are slow to adapt, generate false positives and often block good customers while missing organised abuse.
Playbook for revenue leaders
So what should revenue and payments leaders focus on next?
- Treat gift cards as high-risk digital goods, not low-risk giveaways. With projected growth of 7–13 % annually, they represent fast-moving stored value that deserves the same protection as other digital assets.
- Design gift card journeys end-to-end. Risk does not start or end at checkout and visibility across purchase, fulfilment and redemption is essential.
- Move beyond static rules. Behaviour-based, real-time risk assessment is better suited to detecting abuse patterns without disrupting legitimate customers.
- Align growth and risk around the same outcome. Sustainable scale comes from protecting value while keeping customer journeys fast and friction-light.
Where Protectmaxx fits
This is where Protectmaxx comes in. Protectmaxx is built to protect high-risk digital goods like gift cards, vouchers and other instantly consumable products. It provides real-time behavioural risk analysis across the full lifecycle, from purchase through fulfilment to redemption. Instead of relying on blunt rules, Protectmaxx focuses on identifying abnormal patterns that indicate abuse, while allowing legitimate customers to transact smoothly. This helps teams reduce false positives, limit revenue leakage, and scale gift card programmes with confidence. For revenue and payments leaders, Protectmaxx turns fraud prevention from a brake on growth into an enabler of it. If interested fore more infromation, explore it with our team.
