Israel’s Virtual Gift Card Economy

In May 2026, Phoenix Services completed the acquisition of control of BUYME in a transaction valuing the Israeli digital gifting company at ₪840 million. The deal brought a business built around gifts and merchant relationships into a much larger financial-services group. Phoenix Financial’s half-year financial report records the closing in May and the ₪840 million company valuation. That valuation describes the business as a whole, rather than the cash paid for the controlling stake. [S01].

By August, Phoenix was describing BUYME to investors as a platform with more than 1.2 million end users, 15,000 employer relationships and 1,200 brands and merchants. These are company-reported measures of reach, without a disclosed active-user window; they are not estimates of Israel’s entire gift-card market. Their significance is the set of relationships they describe: consumers, employers and merchants connected by digitally delivered value. [S02].

At roughly the same time, Israeli voucher rules were being revised to address another side of that business: what happens when the recipient does not spend the money promptly. The regulatory changes concern validity, renewal, reminders and the return of value after a cancelled purchase. They make the period after delivery an increasingly important part of the product.

Together, the transaction and the rules offer a useful way into this market. Digital gifting is a means of distributing spending power. Its value to the recipient depends on the merchants, checkout options and rights attached to it.

This article examines virtual gift and reward cards in Israel, following the consumer journey from receipt to online redemption. It also explains the boundary with employer benefit cards, virtual Visa and Mastercard products, and ordinary digital credit cards. Physical gift products are outside the main scope; where a digitally presented product cannot be used online, that restriction is identified explicitly. All local amounts are in Israeli shekels, written ₪ or NIS.

What “virtual card” means in the Israeli market

A code in a text message, a balance in an app and a Visa number can each look like a virtual card. They can represent very different obligations.

The distinction matters particularly in Israel because consumer gifting, retail vouchers and employer benefits intersect. An employee may receive a gift directly, buy a merchant voucher using an eligible benefit budget, or pay through a card linked to an employer’s spending policy. Those routes can produce similar screens without creating the same rights.

T01. Five products that can appear as a virtual card

These are practical categories for reading the market, rather than a substitute for each product’s legal classification. A single app can contain several of them.

A credible account of the market therefore needs several kinds of evidence: consumer preferences, actual product terms, provider disclosures and legal rules. A single forecast expressed in dollars cannot do all of those jobs.

The employer is an important route to the recipient

Holiday gifting provides an established distribution occasion. Israeli employment lawyers describe gifts around Passover and Rosh Hashanah as customary and, in some circumstances, required by an employment agreement or established arrangement. That is different from saying every employer has a universal statutory obligation to provide the same gift. [S03].

An AllJobs survey of 476 participants, reported on 10 September 2026, found 45% preferred prepaid cards, vouchers or certificates, 41% cash and 11% physical products. Digital formats were not separated. [S04].

Cards and cash were the two leading disclosed choices in this sample. The poll does not resolve how recipients value the restrictions attached to a particular gift. They do not establish a preference for digital vouchers over cash.

A preference is different from a payment already made

Statista Consumer Insights adds a historical measure of use. Among surveyed internet users aged 18–64 in Israel, reported online use of prepaid cards or vouchers was 20% in 2020, 18% in 2021, 19% in 2022 and 20% in 2023. The corresponding in-store figures were 21%, 18%, 22% and 19%. [S46]

The online series shows no uninterrupted climb. For a virtual gift-card business, the distinction between delivery and spending matters just as much. A digital voucher may be presented in a shop; a prepaid credential may be used online without having been a gift. The 2023 usage figures and the 2026 holiday-preference poll answer different questions. Neither establishes the size of today’s virtual-gift-card market.

Distribution makes the employer’s task easier

Providers compete partly by making employer distribution easier. BUYME’s business platform documents scheduled and bulk delivery, personalised greetings, budget permissions and reports covering expenditure and gift opening. Its public offer says there is no subscription fee, with payment for the gifts themselves. Those features address the employer’s administrative task; an opened gift is still not proof that its value has been spent. [S05].

Cibus and 10bis occupy another position. Cibus publishes a route for purchasing BUYME gifts from its app or website, while 10bis includes BUYME vouchers in its employer offering. They are distribution channels for another provider’s product as well as benefit services in their own right. Adding the same gift value to both companies’ supposed market totals would double-count the underlying activity. Cibus’s BUYME integration [S06] and 10bis’s employer service [S07].

Choice does not eliminate the emotional part of gifting

An employee gift and a birthday gift can use the same technical mechanism while carrying different meanings. The first may be interpreted as recognition from an organisation. The second carries a message from a particular person. Neither meaning is fully captured by the amount loaded.

BUYME’s own review of 2025 offers evidence of that personal layer. It groups about 55% of gifts around birthdays, births and major holidays, with approximately 45% covering other occasions. Separately, in a discussion of thank-you gifts, it says more than 70% of senders included a greeting and roughly 40% added a photograph or video. The company does not define the exact analytics population for those sender figures. These are attributed platform observations, with no published exact denominator or independent audit; they are not a national survey or a virtual-card-only count. [S08].

A reasonable interpretation is that digital delivery can carry both choice and personal expression. It does not establish that adding a video causes higher redemption or makes every recipient feel appreciated. Those would require different research.

The recipient’s questions also change over time. On arrival, the question may be whether the message is authentic and who sent it. Before shopping, it becomes whether the gift works for the intended purchase. After shopping, the remaining amount can create another decision: use it, combine it, request a remedy, or leave it for later.

That sequence is an analytical framework for understanding the product journey. No interviews conducted for this article establish a universal Israeli mindset, and no evidence here supports a psychological threshold at exactly ₪1, ₪2 or ₪3.

The provider map: twelve different positions

The following selection identifies relevant programmes and services by role. It is not a ranking by sales or market share. It also avoids counting every participant as an issuer: the merchant, processor, benefits administrator and distributing platform can be different organisations.

T02. Twelve providers and programmes by role

Several familiar names require care. Isracard’s publicly documented standard Gift Card explicitly excludes ecommerce. A specific FOX HOME digital voucher likewise says it cannot be used online, despite displaying card-style details. Neither should be presented as a verified virtual ecommerce solution simply because the issuer is prominent or the credential looks like a payment card. Isracard product terms [S26] and FOX HOME digital-voucher terms [S27].

The provider map is therefore more useful as a description of roles and demonstrated capabilities than as a list of logos. For a recipient, the immediate question is which exact product works at checkout. For a commercial partner, the question is which company controls that capability.

Three ways to turn a gift into spending power

The word “wallet” can hide important differences. It may describe a collection of separate codes, a combined balance or a conversion into retailer credit.

BUYME’s FAQ describes a gift wallet and a balance check using the full code from the original message. It also distinguishes combining gifts at redemption from merging them permanently: its FAQ permits multiple gifts in one transaction, while saying that separate codes cannot be merged into a single code. Actual online merchant handling still needs to be checked. [S28].

Wolt describes a different journey. A recipient opens the gift link, signs into a Wolt account and redeems the value there. Several gift cards can contribute to that account balance, which can be used over multiple orders. The country selected for the gift remains a restriction: sending a link internationally does not make its value usable in every Wolt market. [S10].

At Terminal X, eligible gifts can be converted into personal, nontransferable retailer credit. Conversion cannot be cancelled. Its guide lists certain BUYME, Tav HaZahav, MAX and SWISH variants. A broad original acceptance list can therefore become one retailer’s spending balance. [S17].

T03. Three wallet models, three different commitments

These are documented product differences, not minor interface details. They determine whether a small remainder can join another gift, whether it can move elsewhere and which support team must respond if the intended purchase fails.

Rami Levy’s programme shows another layer: the processing implementation can matter. Its linked terms identify online acceptance conditions that differ between Multipass-processed and Isracard-processed variants. A merchant name alone is insufficient evidence that every version of the voucher works on that merchant’s website. [S29].

Employer budgets are moving into several kinds of digital product

Cibus illustrates how a benefits platform can connect the gift market with payment-card infrastructure. It identifies itself as a Pluxee subsidiary and reports serving 8,000 companies and 600,000 workers. Those figures describe its broader benefit business, not the number of people holding a virtual gift card. [S20].

Its 2025 consumption report says 58% of companies in the analysed population broadened budget use beyond food into a group of categories including supermarkets, convenience retail, pharmacies and BUYME. The report draws on more than 6,500 companies; the category grouping prevents the result from being read as “58% bought gift cards.” It does show how employer-controlled budgets can reach additional kinds of spending. [S30].

In July 2026, Cibus described a voucher option that lets eligible users convert remaining budget into a digital voucher, save it in the app and receive an email or SMS copy. The company says the voucher can remain usable beyond the monthly budget period and that multiple vouchers can be used together. The page does not establish one universal expiry period, and colleague-to-colleague transfer is described as a future feature. [S21].

The change in form matters. An unspent employer allocation is governed by an employer’s budget rules; a purchased voucher introduces its own redemption conditions. The recipient needs to know when that conversion becomes final and whether it preserves the intended spending options.

CibusPay is another product. Official material describes a digital Visa credential connected to the Cibus budget, usable through supported delivery applications and compatible with Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. Broader international acceptance is presented as a future development on the product page, so the Visa logo alone cannot be translated into worldwide spendability. CibusPay product page [S31] and August 2026 introduction [S32].

The contractual distinctions are particularly revealing. Cibus’s terms identify Israel Credit Cards Ltd, known as CAL, as the card issuer, or a subsequently contracted alternative. They distinguish a version without a personal credit line from a combined +CibusPay product with a separately agreed personal line. Issuer approval and required information still apply. The ordinary Cibus budget account is expressly distinguished from a current or payment account. [S33].

This is why a benefits app should not be treated as one homogeneous wallet. The same commercial relationship can involve a budget ledger, third-party gift codes and a CAL-issued payment credential. Each has to be understood on its own terms.

A virtual Visa or Mastercard is a separate market proposition

For users seeking a network payment card, eligibility in Israel is a more meaningful claim than a general promise of global reach.

Giftbit explicitly includes Israel on its approved-country list for Virtual Prepaid Mastercard. Its dedicated USD product describes delivery through a digital link or message, recipient registration, online spending and supported mobile wallets. The issuer disclosure names Pathward, a US bank. This is a documented international reward option for eligible recipients, rather than an Israeli-issued shekel voucher. Giftbit country eligibility [S24] and USD product [S25].