Dublin, Feb. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The “Asia-Pacific Gift Card Business and Investment Opportunities Databook – 90+ KPIs on Gift Card Market Size, Retail & Corporate Spend, Competitive Landscape, and Consumer Demographics – Q1 2026 Update” report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com’s offering.
The Gift Card market in Asia-Pacific is expected to grow by 8% on annual basis to reach US$275.9 billion in 2026. The gift card market in the region has experienced robust growth during 2021-2025, achieving a CAGR of 8.6%. This upward trajectory is expected to continue, with the market forecast to grow at a CAGR of 7.7% from 2026-2030. By the end of 2030, the Gift Card sector is projected to expand from its 2025 value of USD 255.4 billion to approximately USD 371 billion.
Competitive advantage will move from “more brands” to risk controls, instant fulfillment, and enterprise-grade admin (limits, audit trails, dispute handling). Expect more cross-border partnerships (payments networks, wallets) and selective acquisitions where platforms buy incentive rails or fraud tech, rather than broad roll-ups.
Current State of the Market
- Competitive intensity is highest in Australia and India, where digital aggregators, banks, and large platforms compete for distribution (apps, wallets, B2B rewards portals) and for retailer connectivity (brand coverage, instant issuance, refunds/support).
- Australia is consolidating around specialist digital gift card platforms (notably Prezzee and Karta), while compliance and fraud controls are increasingly shaping product design and unit economics.
- India is platform-led: marketplaces and payment ecosystems use gift cards as a standard instrument for consumer gifting and corporate rewards, with feature competition (personalisation, packaging, occasion-specific flows).
Key Players and New Entrants
- Australia: Prezzee (consumer + enterprise), Karta (program manager/tech; also operates a consumer marketplace), plus card manufacturers and prepaid infrastructure partners.
- India: Amazon Pay Gift Cards (and other large commerce/payments ecosystems) set expectations on usability and redemption; enterprise rewards players distribute multi-brand options.
- Southeast Asia (Singapore/region): super-app voucher rails (e.g., GrabGifts for corporate/bulk) compete with retailer-issued e-gifts and incentive intermediaries for B2B budgets.
Shift gift cards from “retail checkout add-on” to “fraud-managed payment product”
- Australian gift cards, especially high-velocity third-party cards (e.g., Apple), are being treated more like a risk product than a seasonal retail accessory. Controls are moving closer to the point of sale: clearer scam warnings, tighter staff prompts, and stronger detection for suspicious purchase patterns and card tampering.
- The Apple ecosystem has continued to publish consumer guidance on gift-card payment scams, reinforcing a simple rule set (what gift cards can and cannot be used for) that retailers and banks reuse in their own warnings and training material. Consumer-protection bodies are keeping scams in the public narrative, which raises executive attention on loss-prevention, returns/refunds policy edge cases, and reputational risk from “I bought a gift card, and it didn’t work” complaints.
- Scam substitution: Fraudsters keep pushing victims toward hard-to-recover payment methods, including gift cards, prompting regulators and retailers to add more friction.
- Retail operational exposure: Large-format retailers bear the burden when cards are compromised or bought under coercion; this requires clearer policies and store-level interventions rather than leaving “fraud” to banks alone.
- Controls will intensify: more transaction gating (limits, prompts), packaging/activation hardening, and clearer “no refunds/limited refunds” positioning for third-party cards. Expect higher compliance overhead for retailers (training, signage, incident handling) and more scrutiny of distributors/aggregators that supply third-party gift cards.
Make gift cards a programmable incentive inside super-apps
- In Singapore, gift cards are increasingly distributed as in-app vouchers tied to super-app usage rather than as standalone stored value. Corporate gifting and incentives are a primary use case: companies distribute digital vouchers as links/codes, and recipients redeem within the everyday app journey (transport, food delivery, groceries, parcel).
- Grab’s GrabGifts positioning is explicitly built for corporate and bulk distribution and redemption across multiple Grab services, making the “gift card” behave like a controlled incentive instrument inside the platform rather than a generic prepaid product. Banks also use platform vouchers in campaigns (e.g., time-bounded voucher T&Cs), reinforcing vouchers as a mainstream acquisition/engagement mechanic rather than a niche perk.
- Super-app frequency: Where a single app covers multiple high-frequency categories, a voucher has more redemption paths, reducing breakage risk for the sender and improving perceived utility for recipients.
- Corporate HR and sales incentives modernise: Digital distribution (links/codes) is operationally simpler for employers and channel partners than physical cards, especially across dispersed workforces.
- This will intensify as platforms expand the number of redemption surfaces and as corporate buyers standardise on “bulk digital voucher rails.” Market structure shifts toward platform-controlled ecosystems (closed-loop or semi-closed designs), with distributors/benefits platforms competing on admin tooling, controls, and reporting rather than on card inventory alone.
Tie gift cards more tightly to regulated prepaid rails and interoperability boundaries
- India’s gift-card stack is increasingly anchored to the Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) rulebook and its interoperability roadmap, while maintaining carve-outs that prevent “gift PPIs” from behaving like general-purpose wallets. This pushes issuers to design gift cards/vouchers with clearer product boundaries (one-time load, limited transferability) and stronger issuer-side compliance.
- RBI’s update on enabling UPI access for PPIs highlights how the ecosystem is formalising interoperability important context for prepaid products broadly, even as gift constructs often remain treated differently from reloadable wallets. Compliance expectations around PPIs (including audits and operational controls) are becoming more explicit in industry guidance, which influences how large issuers operationalise gift-card programs.
- Payments infrastructure scaling: As UPI becomes the default transaction layer, prepaid issuers are expected to align with interoperability and risk controls; gift products must be deliberately designed to avoid unintentionally replicating wallet functionality.
- Issuer and merchant risk management: Larger gift programs (employee rewards, channel incentives) require defensible controls on issuance, loading, and redemption to avoid misuse and disputes.
- Expect the category to intensify in two ways: more gift issuance via regulated PPI issuers and clearer “product taxonomy” separating gift vouchers from reloadable wallets. Growth will favor issuers and platforms that can package gift cards with audit-ready controls and reporting for enterprise buyers.
Reframe gift cards as a scam instrument that triggers cross-border enforcement
- In Japan, gift cards (notably Apple/other digital-store cards) continue to feature in tech-support and impersonation scams, driving a stronger public-safety framing: gift cards are treated as a fraud cash-out mechanism, not just a consumer gift.
- Reporting on investigations involving Japanese victims highlights how scammers instruct victims to buy Apple Gift Cards and share codes, showing continued operational reliance on gift cards in fraud playbooks and the resulting law-enforcement attention. Apple’s own scam guidance reinforces the misuse pattern and provides a consumer message that can be reused by retailers and authorities.
- Low-friction monetisation: Codes can be exfiltrated instantly and redeemed remotely, which keeps gift cards attractive to fraud networks.
- Demographics and social engineering: Fraud campaigns that exploit urgency and authority continue to convert victims into “over-the-counter gift-card buyers,” pulling convenience retail into the frontline of prevention.
- This will intensify as in-store friction (warnings, cashier intervention) and closer coordination among platforms, retailers, and authorities on scam-prevention messaging and victim support increase. Legitimate gift-card programs will face higher UX friction (more prompts/limits), especially for categories most associated with scam demand.
A Bundled Offering, Combining the Following 14 Reports, Covering 1,650+ Tables and 4,000+ Figures for the Gift Card Market
- Asia-Pacific Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Australia Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- China Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- India Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Indonesia Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Japan Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Malaysia Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- New Zealand Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Philippines Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Singapore Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- South Korea Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Taiwan Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Thailand Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
- Vietnam Gift Card Market Business and Investment Opportunities Databook
Key Attributes:
| Report Attribute | Details |
| No. of Pages | 4480 |
| Forecast Period | 2026 – 2030 |
| Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2026 | $275.9 Billion |
| Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2030 | $371 Billion |
| Compound Annual Growth Rate | 7.7% |
| Regions Covered | Asia Pacific |
Companies Featured
- 7-Eleven
- 99 Speedmart
- AEON Retail
- Aeon Big
- Aldi
- Alfamart
- Alibaba (all brands)
- Amazon India
- Amazon Japan
- Apple
- Auckland Retail
- Belle (all brands)
- Big C Extra
- Big C Supercenter
- Big W
- BigBasket
- BRG Retail / Hapro
- Briscoe Group
- Bunnings
- CapitaLand Malls
- Central
- Coles
- Con Cung
- Costco Korea
- Courts
- Croma
- CU
- Daimaru Matsuzakaya
- Erafone
- FairPrice Group
- FamilyMart
- Farmers Trading Co.
- Far Eastern SOGO
- Foodstuffs (Group)
- FPT Retail
- Giant
- Global House
- Gourmet Market
- Grab
- Gramedia
- Guardian
- Harvey Norman
- Hero
- Hi-Life
- Himart
- HomePro
- Homeplus
- Hypermart
- IGA
- Ikea
- Indomaret
- Ito-Yokado
- JB Hi-Fi
- JD.com
- Jollibee
- Kmart
- Lazada
- Lifestyle
- Lotte Department Store
- Lotte Mart
- Lotus’s Malaysia
- Mercury Drug
- Mitre 10
- Mobile World Investment Corporation
- Momo.com Inc.
- Mr. D.I.Y.
- Myntra
- New World
- NewCore Outlet
- Nykaa
- OK Mart
- Olive Young
- PChome Online
- Phu Nhu?n Jewelry (PNJ)
- President Chain Store Corp.
- Puregold Price Club
- PX Mart
- Qoo10
- Rakuten
- Reliance Retail
- Robinsons Supermarket
- RT-Mart
- Samsung Retail
- SATRA (Saigon Trading Group)
- Sephora
- Sheng Siong
- Shin Kong Mitsukoshi
- Shinsegae Dept. Store
- Shopee
- Shoppers Stop
- Siam Makro
- Simple Mart
- SM Hypermarket
- SM Store
- Suning.com
- Sunway REIT
- Super Indo
- Taiwan FamilyMart
- Target
- Tanishq
- Tesco Hypermarket
- The Warehouse
- Tops Market
- Transmart Carrefour
- Uniqlo
- Unimart
- Vincom Retail
- Vip.com
- Watsons
- WinCommerce
- Woolworths
- Woolworths Supermarkets
- Wumart
- Yodobashi Camera
- Yonghui Superstores
For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ppi24i
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- Asia-Pacific Gift Card Market
