SUNDRE – The Sundre & District Chamber of Commerce not only wants to make shopping at Sundre businesses more convenient but also to keep as much money in the community as possible.
To that end, the president of the Sundre and District Chamber of Commerce is exploring the feasibility of a customized gift card that would be accepted at participating local retailers.
Although not intended to generate revenue for the chamber, the service that facilitates a quick and easy one-size-fits-all payment method would present a cost that requires enough community buy-in before being able to proceed, said Sarah Kennedy.
“The aim is that it will be something that the chamber will provide to the community, to all of our chamber members,” said Kennedy, adding the card would be accepted at participating business.
“So, one local gift card that can be used to go and buy a coffee, to pay for your contact lenses, to go and get some gas, to change your tires – whatever,” she said.
Essentially a Visa gift card, Kennedy said the intent is to keep money in the community.
When someone purchases a gift card regardless of the occasion, it’s usually for any number of big box brands outside of town since they might not know of a particular business in town that the person they’re buying it for might be interested in shopping at, she said.
“This way, you buy the one gift card knowing that they can spend it wherever they would like. So, if they want to get groceries, they can go pick up groceries. If they want to treat themselves to lunch somewhere nice, then they can use it at one of our restaurants,” she said.
“It keeps our money in our community.”
The solution, she said, is a digital and physical gift card.
“You can email a gift to somebody and it would go into their digital wallet,” she said.
“It’s not an antiquated, old gift card program that we manually have to do anything with. It’s all current and up-to-date technology backed by a payment company.”
The company, which is called Miconex, is powered by EML Payments and has already rolled out tailor-made gift cards to numerous communities throughout Canada.
The service would cost the chamber not only for the physical cards themselves but also loading them and processing payments, she said, adding the monthly expense would amount to approximately $1,200.
“We currently don’t have the budget to do it, but with more membership, we could offer this out to the community,” she said.
“So we’re just looking to strengthen our chamber to be able to support the cost,” she said. “The more members I have, the quicker it’s going to come.”
While the card’s design would be customized and could be branded specifically after Sundre, Kennedy envisions the possibility of branching farther out to alleviate the cost burden by bringing other municipalities into the fold.
“I’m toying with the idea, just because of the way it works, I could actually offer it to surrounding communities,” she said.
“I have an agreement with the company that we could almost be like a franchisee, and offer it to Olds, and offer it to Cremona and offer it to Didsbury and reduce everybody’s costs in administering the program,” she said.
“But at this point, my plan is that we become the guinea pig.”
If a person were to obtain a card, they would then be able to reload its balance at a few key retail locations in Sundre, she said.
“There’ll be a couple of businesses where you can go and buy the card or top up.”
But as uptake in the program grows, there would also be an opportunity to expand it to other businesses as well, she said, adding chamber members who opt in would simply have to provide information about their point-of-sale systems that would then be configured to accept the cards.
As to what kind of timeline Kennedy envisions, she said, “As soon as I get enough members joining that we can justify the costs within our budget, that is my plan.
“My goal, with enough buy-in, is to have it this year.”
She also hopes that non-retail locations such as local industry might be willing to get behind the program to make it feasible. Even if they wouldn’t be accepting the card over the counter, they could still become members to help get the initiative off the ground and encourage local spending as well as offer the cards to their employees as gifts for occasions such as Christmas, she said.
