What are Digital Restaurant Gift Cards?

Digital gift cards are gift cards that exist entirely online, with no physical card involved. A customer buys one through a website or app, and it gets sent via email, usually as a code or a link, instead of a plastic card sent via courier.

For restaurants, these have become a pretty easy way to bring in extra revenue, especially around holidays, without much added cost. Someone buys a $50 digital gift card at 11 p.m. from their phone, and the restaurant has that money in hand before the recipient even redeems it.

Gift cards bring in cash upfront, sometimes months before they actually get used, which can help smooth out slower months. Some gift cards never even get redeemed at all, which restaurants account for separately, usually as what's called breakage.

Digital gift cards also tend to be easier to track than physical ones. Most POS systems can log the balance, the purchase date, and redemption automatically, which makes accounting a lot simpler than keeping plastic cards.