The HTA Gift Card has been named a winner in the 2014 Paybefore Awards Europe in the Best Choice Retail Card category. 

The Gift Card was selected as a winner by a panel of five industry experts who served as judges for this year’s Paybefore Awards Europe competition.

The HTA Garden Gift Card is a restricted authorisation network (RAN) gift card that is sold at more than 3,000 retail locations across the UK such as supermarkets, hardware stores and newsagents in order to reach a broad consumer audience. 

Distributors include ASDA, Sainsburys, Wilkinsons, Clintons, WHSmith, Tesco and Morrisons. This distribution method allows the HTA to promote gift card sales to a much wider audience than just garden centre shoppers.

David Butler, NGGV & Gift Card General Manager of HTA says: “The gift card programme is about developing the industry and its member businesses by capturing some of the garden gifting spend on the high street. The card programme was created to increase footfall into garden centres across the UK and to engage consumers from all walks of life in gardening as a hobby.”

The HTA is a not-for-profit trade association that is dedicated to providing support to its members , of which many are locally owned family businesses. This programme serves consumers by guiding them to make a gift card buying decision that is more thoughtful to locally owned businesses.  The result is a satisfying buying experience for the consumer as well as the recipient.

David Shewmaker, CEO of StoreFinancial Europe adds: “The RAN functionality allows consumers to redeem the card at any of the participating garden centres, regardless of geography and without changing existing hardware or software at the redemption locations. This enabled the HTA to deliver on its promise to support the garden centres across the UK with a convenient, flexible gift card programme.”

The gift card is redeemable at over 600 HTA member garden centres across the UK, with the potential to increase to more than 2,000 centres as the programme grows.

“Paybefore Awards Europe shine a spotlight on the innovators using payments to solve complex problems for a variety of constituents,” said Loraine DeBonis, Paybefore editor-in-chief and chair of the judging panel.” Organizations like HTA and StoreFinancial are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in payments,” she continued. “We are proud to recognise their contributions to advancing the prepaid and emerging payments industry.”