Payment Industry Insider

Today is the day typically referred to as Cyber Monday or the traditional kickoff of the online holiday shopping season. Black Friday, the kickoff of the traditional retail shopping season, was just a couple of days ago.

By now every news station has done numerous reports about the holiday shopping rush and what it means to retailers. But for a true front row seat, check out Chase Paymentech and their pulse index. This index is a day-by-day tracking of consumer sales.

As a credit union, now is the time of year when marketing our credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards and Christmas Club accounts pays dividends, literally. It’s not too early to start thinking about how you drive members to your products for next year’s holiday shopping season. Look at the trends that are happening this year and use those in your planning for next year.

A great idea to help your members with their holiday shopping plan (budget) for next year is to tie a prepaid card to your Christmas Club accounts. Not only will this help members save for next year’s spending but it also creates a perceived limit to spending. Once the value that has been saved through the year and loaded onto the card is gone, so is your holiday shopping!

By the way, if your Internet connection in viewing this page is slow, you can bet that Cyber Monday is going well for cyber retailers! Happy shopping!