Giftbit was named as a new Marqeta embedded-finance customer on August 24, 2023, in a partnership focused on prepaid rewards and more flexible disbursements. Giftbit followed with its own explanation on August 31. The announcements linked its gifting and incentive experience with Marqeta’s card-issuing technology. [S01] [S02]
Prepaid infrastructure within the employee-reward market
The USD 176 billion incentive-market figure cited in the partners’ announcements came from the Incentive Federation’s 2022 study of US businesses with at least USD 1 million in annual revenue. It covered several non-cash reward formats and audiences, including sales teams, employees, distributors and customers. It was a modelled market estimate, not a worldwide prepaid-card sales total or Giftbit revenue. [S01] [S02] [S04]
Within that study, gift cards were used by 80% of companies offering employee incentives, compared with 45% using award points and 42% using merchandise. Its gift-card definition included both merchant-specific cards and cards spendable through payment networks. This helps explain the type of corporate reward market Giftbit and Marqeta sought to serve, while leaving the partnership’s own adoption and performance unmeasured. [S04]
2022 study: reward formats used by US companies with employee-incentive programmes
The original study cited by the partnership announcement reports weighted incidence among companies offering employee incentives, within businesses with at least USD 1 million in annual revenue.
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Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Historical weighted survey estimates, not Giftbit customers or Marqeta card activity. Multiple reward formats can be used, so percentages do not sum to 100%. The overall study recruited 1,000 qualified respondents; this employee-programme subgroup’s unweighted count and exact field dates are not stated in the cited table. Gift cards include merchant-specific and network-accepted cards. The figures do not establish preferred formats, actual redemption, loyalty improvement or partnership effects.
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| Category | Companies offering each format |
|---|---|
| Gift cards | 80% |
| Award points | 45% |
| Merchandise | 42% |
| Incentive travel | 36% |
| Experiential rewards | 35% |
The research recruited 1,000 respondents able to answer company spending and budget questions, screened for an existing non-cash incentive programme, and weighted results by company revenue tier. Companies in travel, promotional services, gift-card issuance, incentives, market research and advertising were excluded from the respondent pool. The report does not give exact fieldwork dates or an unweighted employee-programme sample for the chart. Its 2022 figures remain historical context for the August 2023 announcement. [S04]
Giftbit described prepaid cards as one way to give reward recipients choice. Marqeta supplied the issuing and processing platform behind that experience, while Giftbit positioned the service for organisations sending customer or employee rewards and other incentives. [S01] [S02]
The distinction matters because the message that delivers a reward and the machinery that makes the reward spendable are different parts of the service. A recipient may interact with a familiar rewards brand, but the programme still needs a working route from a funded balance to an accepted transaction.
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| Participant | Role described in the announcements |
|---|---|
| Giftbit | Reward platform and recipient experience |
| Marqeta | Card-issuing and payment infrastructure |
| Business objective | Flexible prepaid disbursements within the reward relationship |
Giftbit CEO Leif Baradoy identified recipient choice and flexibility as reasons for using modern prepaid cards. The announcements did not give the contract value, card volume or a measured improvement in redemption, delivery speed or customer retention. [S01]
Marqeta reported that embedded-finance customers represented more than half its bookings in the first half of 2023. That figure describes a broader business category; it is not Giftbit’s share of bookings or this partnership’s transaction volume. [S01]
For an incentive buyer, infrastructure is useful when it removes a real obstacle. The practical questions are how a recipient receives the card, understands where it can be used, checks the balance and gets help after a declined transaction. Procurement therefore needs to assess the reward experience alongside the underlying programme terms.
The announcement confirms the commercial relationship and its intended role. It does not mean that every payment feature described by either company was newly launched for every Giftbit recipient on that date. Availability and individual programme rules still need to be read at the level of the specific offering.
This was the original 2023 announcement. Later accounts of how the programme operated are separate developments and should not be used to redate the start of the relationship.
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Suzie Elis
Suzie Elis covers gift card products, digital gifting and distribution for Gift Card News.