Customer Retention Strategies with Larry Rubin from SwipeIt

Revolutionizing Customer Loyalty and Gift Cards with SwipeIt’s Larry Rubin

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of PayPod, Kevin Rosenquist sits down with Larry Rubin, founder of SwipeIt, to explore the evolving landscape of gift and loyalty card programs in today’s tech-driven marketplace. They discuss how gift cards have transformed from physical plastic cards to instant e-gift cards, integrated into digital wallets like Apple Wallet. 

Larry explains how SwipeIt is modernizing customer retention strategies by offering tailored gift and loyalty card solutions for both physical and digital platforms. They indulge into the challenges faced by small businesses in implementing loyalty programs and how technology can bridge the gap between large corporations and local merchants. 

Lessons You’ll Learn
Listeners will gain valuable insights into how gift and loyalty cards can drive customer engagement and boost revenue. Larry emphasizes the importance of offering both physical and digital gift card options, catering to different customer preferences and increasing gift card usage. He also shares strategies on how small businesses can compete with large corporations by using customized loyalty programs and leveraging data to enhance customer experiences.

You’ll learn how offering bonus incentives (like spending $100 and getting a $25 bonus card) can attract more customers during the holidays. Additionally, Larry shares how gift cards can serve as powerful marketing tools—whether for employee rewards, corporate partnerships, or referral programs. The episode also addresses the challenges of loyalty app saturation and how to strike a balance between digital convenience and physical card appeal.

About Our Guest
Larry Rubin is the founder of SwipeIt, a company dedicated to enhancing customer engagement through innovative gift and loyalty card solutions. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Larry has helped thousands of businesses modernize their customer retention strategies by offering customized, tech-forward solutions. His company specializes in working with small to mid-sized businesses, helping them compete with larger corporations by simplifying and optimizing gift card and loyalty programs.

Larry’s passion for customer loyalty and retention has led him to become a trusted expert in the payments and fintech space. From integrating gift cards into digital wallets to offering support for traditional physical cards, Larry has seen the industry evolve and has adapted his strategies to meet the changing demands of consumers and businesses alike. His company, SwipeIt, focuses on making loyalty programs accessible, efficient, and profitable for businesses of all sizes.

Topics Covered
This episode covers the evolution of gift and loyalty card programs, from physical paper certificates to digital gift cards integrated into mobile wallets. Larry and Kevin discuss the importance of offering both physical and digital options to meet varying customer preferences and how bonus incentives can drive sales during peak seasons. They explore how small businesses can leverage loyalty programs to compete with larger corporations, the role of personalization in loyalty marketing, and the challenges of loyalty app fatigue among consumers.

Larry also shares creative strategies for using gift cards as marketing tools, including employee rewards, referral programs, and corporate partnerships. The episode touches on the future of loyalty programs in a rapidly evolving payments landscape, highlighting the potential integration of cryptocurrency and digital wallets into gift card ecosystems. Whether you’re a small business owner, marketer, or fintech enthusiast, this episode offers actionable insights into the future of customer engagement through gift and loyalty programs.

Our Guest: ​​​​​Larry Rubin

Larry Rubin is a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of SwipeIt, a company specializing in providing gift card solutions for small to mid-sized businesses. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Larry has been instrumental in helping local businesses implement effective gift and loyalty card programs, enabling them to compete with larger corporations. His expertise lies in understanding the unique challenges faced by smaller enterprises and offering tailored solutions that drive customer engagement and increase sales.

Before establishing SwipeIt, Larry recognized a gap in the market where small businesses struggled to offer gift card programs comparable to those of larger retailers. He leveraged his insights to develop a platform that simplifies the implementation and management of gift card systems, making them accessible and affordable for smaller businesses. Through SwipeIt, Larry has empowered numerous local merchants to enhance their customer retention strategies and boost revenue.

Beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, Larry is a thought leader in the gift card industry. He frequently shares his knowledge on the evolution of gift card programs, best practices for implementation, and the importance of marketing and exposure. Larry emphasizes the significance of offering both physical and digital gift card options to cater to diverse customer preferences. His commitment to educating business owners and providing ongoing support has made him a trusted advisor for many seeking to navigate the complexities of customer loyalty programs.

Episode Transcript

Larry Rubin: The best thing to do, probably if you’re a little guy is to copy the big guys. Yeah. You know, like Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King. They’re probably putting millions of dollars into research and development and they know what everyone wants. So then it’s like, okay, they’ve done all the research, they spent all the money. Let’s just take what they have and see if we can do it in a smaller thing, in a localized region. It’s probably the smartest thing in terms of building the program.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey there. Welcome to PayPod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. Today I’m joined by Larry Rubin from Swipeit, a company dedicated to enhancing customer engagement through innovative gift and loyalty card solutions. Larry and his team have been instrumental in helping businesses modernize their customer retention strategies, offering tailored services that cater both to physical and digital platforms. In this episode, we’ll explore how swipe is redefining customer loyalty programs, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the future of gift card technology. Please welcome Larry Rubin. So gift and loyalty cards have been around for decades. How do you see their role evolving in today’s tech driven, customer centric marketplace?

Larry Rubin: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that the biggest shift in gift cards has certainly been the physical gift cards that we used to get in our car and drive to the merchant and grab the card, and they would load it and we’d go home and then since then, we’ve gotten to first they started selling their physical gift cards online and they would mail it to you, which was great. And then the next change was instant e-gift cards. And first we had all the big guys doing it. And then finally, that has kind of trickled down to the little guys who are now being able to offer these virtual gift cards.  great for last minute gift giving. Obviously people, the younger generation, don’t want to deal with plastic cards, right? Yeah. Digital. And then, like, recently for us, we just integrated the Apple Wallet. So now you can save your e-card right in your Apple Wallet.  so, I mean, that was a big thing. If you remember growing up, you’d always be like, where’s the paper gift certificate? You never find it. Then it was like, where are the gift cards? I don’t know, we put it in the sock drawer. They’re not there. So that’s a big thing. Now that’s an advantage and a disadvantage for the merchants, right? So if you lose your gift card, you can’t go in and use it, which means the merchant is making all that money for doing nothing. However, the merchant really wants you to go in and use the gift card because 90% of the people who go in with a gift card spend above the value on that gift card. And the merchants, the restaurant, they’re all in business to bring in customers, to make sales. You know, they’re not sitting there being like, if we could just sell all our gift cards and have people lose it, it’s going to be great. So.

Larry Rubin: Right. So it’s certainly not the intention. So with the E cards now that you can save them either in your Apple Wallet or even in your email, it allows you to use them more or less. So I think at the end of the day, it’s better for the consumer.  and I think the merchant, again, as we said, we want people to come in and, and visit our store, our restaurant, whatever. So I think that’s going to help the what they call breakage in the industry, that unused money, I think would probably dip down because there’ll be less lost cards.

Kevin Rosenquist: Man, you just made me remember something from Christmas time a long time ago. I remember the paper gift certificates I used to get to Musicland, I think it was. And yeah, that was like the best gift I could get. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, he was like, you held on to that. You’re like, don’t lose this or you’re screwed.

Larry Rubin: Right and  that if you lose it and we get these, we get these calls all the time, you know, you’re being nice and you want to send a gift to your grandmother, but maybe don’t send her it via text, you know, you know, 80 years old. So we get the calls a lot where, you know, the old lady calls into our office and she’s like, my grandson sent me an e-card and I can’t find it, or I deleted it, and it’s like, it’s all right as long as you know your email address or your cell phone number will be able to retrieve it, and we can resend it to you so it won’t be lost.

Kevin Rosenquist: Awesome.

Larry Rubin: Yeah. So better system. Yeah. A lot of those phone calls. Then you have the other reverse where the grandmother is trying to buy a gift card. You know, so she’s online trying to do it. It’s like, you know, they call it to our office for support. And, you know, I was like you know, just treat it. Pretend it’s your mother or your grandmother.

Kevin Rosenquist: Your grandmother.

Larry Rubin: Yeah. And help her. Help her make the purchase.

Kevin Rosenquist: So that was my grandma at Musicland getting my gift card. Probably the only time she left the house, like, the entire week. Yeah.

Larry Rubin: And the crazy thing is, we still are today, 2024. We’re still getting people who call up and be like yeah, I’m still using paper certificates. I think it’s ready for me to get gift cards. So yeah, go out there with paper, if you can imagine that.

Kevin Rosenquist: I mean, it’s kind of fun in a nostalgic way, but you got to have a digital backup, I suppose, right?

Larry Rubin: I think so, yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, that’s a good segue to my next question. Is there a balance between physical and digital, or is there really no need for a physical or how do you how do you where do you land on that?

Larry Rubin: Yeah. So I think 100%. You need to have a physical because people want to walk into your restaurant or your store in person, and they want to get something tangible. They want to leave with something. So they want that physical gift card as well as depending on what you’re doing with that gift, you know. So let’s say that you’re going to a wedding, a nice wedding, you know, black tie affair and you have this nice wedding card. It’s kind of better to have a plastic gift card in there than a piece of paper. So I think you know, the presentation certainly differs. Now, again, it’s Mother’s Day. I woke up, I didn’t know it was Mother’s Day. I’m going to go online and I’m going to send her an e-card because I have to, you know, that’s fine, but I think certain occasions warrant different types of gifts. Sure.  You know, in some of these places, they package these gift cards like you’re beautiful.  You know, we have AA1 of the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s a restaurant and it’s a hotel. And you know, when you get a gift card from there, it’s like they mail it out, they have a nice brochure and a nice career. And I mean, so you get this really nice presentation, you open it up, it’s like well, what am I going to do with this gift card? So I think having the physical card certainly can make it a nicer gift.

Larry Rubin: Now in terms of purchasing them online, people like to just say, hey, I just want to do e-cards online because it’s easy. We don’t have to deal with mailing or the post office. But again, in my opinion, I say offer both and let the customer decide. And if you’re worried that it costs more money because with a physical gift card you have to mail it out. So you have postage and the piece of plastic for the card and an envelope and the labor to do it. So you know what? If you’re worried about that, then charge the customer a $2 processing fee, but only charge them on the physical cards. Don’t charge on the e-cards, and then again, you’re giving them the choice. You want to spend more money? Get a physical card, go for it. So I always think let the customer have the option. But we are seeing online that the e-cards are getting more popular than physical cards. I think we have about 6000 clients that we work with, you know, from Cape Cod to California, and maybe a thousand of those are selling online. And we’re seeing, you know, the trend was physical, digital, physical, digital. And now online. We’re seeing about 60% digital cards to 40% of physical cards. And I think digital is going to keep ramping up.

Kevin Rosenquist: I believe I’ve heard that the Gen Z, the younger generation are kind of craving more of a physical.

Larry Rubin: Yes, I heard that today.

Kevin Rosenquist: You know, kind of I have existence, if you will like their whole lives are digital and I wonder if there will be a swing, you know, because of that. I’ve heard that they, they, they’re retail, they’re shopping at retail now. They’re, they’re doing things that are like more, you know, less online because they’re just, they’re so they’ve been online their entire lives.

Larry Rubin: Right. Yeah. I mean, I hope so. I hope so because I think that would be a good thing for the physical gift cards. And you know, it’s also a lot easier to regift if I give myself a gift card. And I get it, I’m like, I don’t want that.

Kevin Rosenquist: I did that so much.

Larry Rubin: But with an E card, you can’t really do it because it’s too Larry, you know, from this for this amount, and it could be a custom message that, you know, hey, thanks for babysitting my kid the other day. I can’t regift it. This kid, you know.

Kevin Rosenquist: So, yeah, that’d be weird.

Larry Rubin: Yeah. So I think the physical gift card still wins in the regifting category.

Kevin Rosenquist: So gift cards, they’re personal too, you know what I mean? They’re not just transactions. I mean, do you see businesses, especially with loyalty and stuff like that, does it help tap into that emotional connection that builds loyalty and more long term relationships? Do you feel there’s a connection there?

Larry Rubin: I think what it first does is it can introduce new customer first, you know, so like I go to this place, I love it. And then I give you a gift card and you’ve never been there. So you go in and then now you love it. So that was an introduction. So that was great. So I think it does that now in terms of loyalty. Yes I believe it does because okay so it’s the holiday time now and I’m like okay, I have to get gifts. The first thing I’m probably going to think of is the restaurant that I like, so I can go to that website or I’m already part of their loyalty program, so I’m already getting email blasts from them. I know that a lot of our clients are actually sending out email blasts that are going to hit probably tomorrow or Thursday morning saying, go to our website or come into our restaurant or store, buy a $100 gift card and we’re going to give you a $25 bonus.

Larry Rubin: So that’s what we see. That’s the huge thing going on right now soit’s the holiday time. So now I’m competing against everyone else for gift card dollars. You know I have $100 that I’m going to sell that I’m going to spend on Jimmy. I know Jimmy likes food, so I’m going to go to maybe these three restaurants. Which one? this one’s offering a bonus. This one’s not. I’m going to go to the one that has the bonus. Absolutely right. And then I can use that bonus to buy that. And I’ll send the gift card to Jimmy. And I’m like, I owe the mailman. I’ll send the bonus to the mailman.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Larry Rubin: There you go. Win, win. Yeah. And so then when I, when someone says, hey, you have an idea for gift cards, I’ll be like, you know what? I just got free money from so and so. You know, it’s the extra exposure, the marketing, you know. So it all helps. And I think it all comes back down to loyalty. You know, I got that email because I was a loyalty member and now I just spreading the word to people about this offer that I got because I’m in this exclusive club.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So for businesses looking to implement or maybe improve their gift or loyalty card programs, what’s the biggest hurdle they normally face? You mentioned that people call you and like, hey, I need to get rid of my physical paper gift cards. Like, are there any real challenges that they face in shifting or is it honestly easier?

Larry Rubin: You know, the biggest thing is finding someone to help them. You know, because I’m a gift card company, so all I do is gift cards, you know, like, that’s my bread and butter. That’s what I know. That’s what I help you with. That’s what I’m gonna talk your ear over for the next half hour about gift cards. You know that’s what I do, right? But you have the point of sale systems who offer gift cards because they have to, but they don’t want to support it. They don’t want to help you. They don’t know all the ins and outs. You have a credit card processor I just want to set you up with credit cards. I need gift card. I can set you up, but I don’t really specialize in it. I don’t know about it. I’m not going to be able to support you. So you have all these companies or all these, you know, merchants and stores that are already set up with a gift card program through someone who’s not helping them. So it’s not hard for them to switch to someone. But it’s really knowing that, like I talked to a guy today and he’s like, yeah, I pay 30 bucks a month. I don’t even, I don’t I haven’t used it in two years. All right. Well, you know, either cancel it or find someone who’s going to help you. So. Yeah, right. You know, if you paint your base, you just throw $30 down the drain. And I was like, who does your gift card? He’s like, my credit card company. I was like, well, that’s why.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s the problem. Yeah.

Larry Rubin: They’re gonna keep taking that $30. They don’t care.  and it’s a line item on your thing, probably with your credit card processing, so you barely even see it.  And so, yeah, that’s where we come in and say, hey, listen, we specialize in the small guys. We can help you start a new program, or we can help you improve on your existing one. You know, let’s sit down and talk, you know. Then we talk, you know, we see, you know, what are you doing for, you know, what are your costs? How are you marketing it? Do you have it on your social media? Are you hitting the major gift card holidays? Yep. Just little things, I mean, and there’s a whole bunch of things that you could do for free. Like, say you’re a pizza place and you print a paper menu by the thousands. Okay, well, on the front, put in big test big text gift cards available. It costs you absolutely nothing. But guess what? Now everyone who gets your menu sees that you have gift cards. So it’s like little things like that that you know, it’s not. We don’t have to have big brains to think of it. It’s just I don’t think about gift cards, so I wouldn’t even think of putting that there. 

Kevin Rosenquist: Right. It didn’t even cross their mind at the time. Yeah. Yeah.

Larry Rubin: Right. But that’s all we see. We’re just like, well, why don’t they have gift cards? You know, that’s all we see is like gift.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. You know, I mean it feels like I feel like everyone has a loyalty program now too. Like from the burrito joint to the marijuana dispensary. Like, everybody’s got some sort of a loyalty program. What trends do you see in how customers are engaging with the loyalty programs?

Larry Rubin: You know, I think the issue right now with the loyalty programs is how do you keep track of all of them? You know, so when we first started doing it, it was, you know, you had a you had a, you got a loyalty card, right. And like, okay, well how many cards can I have in my wallet? My wallet is.

Kevin Rosenquist: Totally private castanza.

Larry Rubin: All the apps. But now how many apps do I want to have on my phone? I’m going to have the McDonald’s app, the subway app, every fast food outlet. Everyone sees my phone and be like, whoa, you are very unhealthy. You have a horrible diet. So what is this? You’re getting plenty of free stuff, but I don’t think it’s at the right place. So I think that the million dollar question is how do you have a loyalty app with all these places without bogging down your wallet or your phone? And I don’t know the answer yet. I think that’s yet to be determined.

Kevin Rosenquist: Are customers expecting more personalization.

Larry Rubin: Or do you get your free stuff?

Kevin Rosenquist: I think we might be on a slight delay, you and I. Larry?

Larry Rubin: Yeah, I think they definitely like the personalization, but it’s more of how are you going to communicate to me and how am I going to earn my rewards? Is it I have to scan something with my phone?  We actually had an interesting thing. We had a loyalty program with a restaurant, and they switched from a card based program to an app based program. I spent a lot of money. They actually moved away from us because we didn’t have the app base. We were doing the product, so we helped them move to this app program. Wish them well. Seven days, I think we got a call. We need to switch everything back. But what happened? What’s wrong? We didn’t realize that our clientele are older people. They don’t want to have to do their loyalty on a phone. Half of them have flip phones. They want to have that card. So it’s also knowing your customers, you know, and like we were just saying, maybe it’s going to go back to the physical cards because the Gen Xers want it, want the tangible thing, or are they happy to have it on their phone? I don’t know, but this place was like. So I guess if you were in Florida, you probably still doing a lot of card based programing instead of app because everyone’s a hundred years old. I don’t.

Kevin Rosenquist: Know. With so many loyalty programs out there, how can businesses stand out and, and sort of get their customers to engage with them?

Larry Rubin: I think that’s the difficult thing is I think they have to be creative in their offers. You know, to be honest, the best thing to do probably if you’re a little guy is to copy the big guys. Yeah. You know, like Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King. They’re probably putting millions of dollars into research and development and they know what everyone wants. So then it’s like, okay, they’ve done all the research, they spent all the money. Let’s just take what they have and see if we can do it in a smaller thing, in a localized region. It’s probably the smartest thing in terms of building the program, but it’s tough. There’s so many companies out there that do programs, and if you go online you’ll find dozens and dozens and it’s like, who can I trust? Who’s going to be around in a year, who’s you know, we’ve you know, we’ve been doing this for 25 years. We’ve seen so many companies come and go throughout this whole time.  and companies that, you know, I remember back in the, the.com boom, we were seeing companies, they were like getting thrown millions of dollars and they, you know, and we have a meeting with them about integrating our gift cards. So how many customers do you have? We have three. Like what? Yeah, we have three customers, but we have a bid on the fourth one. It’s looking good. And we’re like. And you just blew through $2 million in a year and owe. Your investors are giving you another 5 million. It was crazy. Yeah. But that company is gone. And I think a lot of them are gone. So it’s also who can you trust with your loyalty with your you know, these are your customers. This is probably the most important thing you have. It’s difficult.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. I find myself more like for loyalty programs. I’m more likely to sign up for a program for a local company than a big brand. And I don’t know if it’s a mental thing or if it’s maybe to your point, like, I don’t really need the McDonald’s loyalty program. It’s not really a good idea for me, so maybe that’s part of it. But do small businesses face more challenges when it comes to getting, you know, implementing loyalty programs than the big guys?

Larry Rubin: 100%. I mean, we see it. And same with the gift card marketing because, you know, again, you go to that small place that the owner could be, let’s say it’s a restaurant. He could be the chef. He could be the marketing manager, he could be the janitor. He could be the maintenance man, you know? So now you’re saying, we also want you to run a loyalty program on top of everything, you know? So it’s like he’s being pulled in so many directions where it’s like, he just can’t do it all. Where I think these larger companies, let’s say just Chipotle or McDonald’s, it’s like, okay, we have a 200 person marketing team that’s going to analyze every little bit of a loyalty program, how we should implement it once it’s implemented, to make sure that it’s running smoothly, to analyze the data. Once we have it back, you know, they have a whole team, a whole staff where the little guys like, well, maybe I can get to it next month to even look at it, right? Yeah. So I think that the biggest challenge is 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. And, you know, you’re a small business owner. That’s the and that’s why we come in with the gift cards and we’re like, let us take one thing off your plate. Right. We know you’re doing a million things. Yeah. Like, you don’t need to be taking a gift card order over the phone and then mailing it out. Like, we can do that. That’s what we specialize in. The UPS guy is coming every day to pick up the mail. You don’t need to do it.

Kevin Rosenquist: And to your point, too, about, like, just, you know, like you’re trying to implement this program and you see that there’s an option on your POS system and you’re like, well, that’s easy. I’ve already got this. This is fine. But then to your but but what you were saying is people do that and then it kind of doesn’t really they don’t really help you at all. Right.

Larry Rubin: Right. So there’s a button. Great.

Kevin Rosenquist: Right. Exactly. There’s a button. Yeah. I’m already integrated. So it’s easy, but it’s not as easy as they think.

Larry Rubin: Well first I have to call someone at the POS support. Good luck.

Larry Rubin: Explain to me what I can do with that button. And let’s say they explain. Okay, great. Then I go back. Okay. Well, now I still need to design a loyalty card. I need to find a printer to print it.  I need to have a way to sign up the customers probably, you know, so it’s like all these questions that they have that, you know, if they contact the company that knows what they’re doing, they’ll be like, yeah, you do. One, two, three. Here are your steps. But if you’re out on that island by yourself and you’re just like, I don’t even know where to start. And it’s daunting. And then that’s, you know, in order comes in for 20 pizzas and that’s out of your topic, you’re back into the current running your business. And that goes away for another month until downtime. You’re like, I remember I was that loyalty button. I need to do that right.

Kevin Rosenquist: The payments world, you know, we’re a payments podcast mostly, you know, fintech. But the payments world is changing fast, with crypto and BNPL, digital wallets, all that stuff. How do you see loyalty programs like gift cards sort of fitting into this rapidly evolving landscape?

Larry Rubin: Yeah. You know, the gift cards are such a separate entity right now. So it’s interesting. I think the first step will probably be people will start saying, hey, you can buy your gift card with your cryptocurrency and stuff like that. That’ll probably be the first step where they’ll start allowing you to purchase the gift cards. And then I don’t know where it’s going to go from there. I mean, these things change so fast. You know, we’re we just, um, did a cannabis convention for the first time in the beginning of the year, you know, and so going to there, it’s almost like you go into there and you’re back in time again that we can’t take credit cards. You know, they have all these extra restrictions on this industry because it’s so brand new.  and so it’s like, you know, well, does anyone have a gift card gift? So, you know, we jump in there and it’s like we’re back in 1997 again. It’s crazy. So it’s interesting. So I feel like there’s a lot of stuff moving in the payment world right now. And yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how everything pans out. I think the gift cards will remain a part of it though, I’m hoping.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I don’t see, I can’t see it going away. And like I said, I mean, I know gift cards are sort of your bread and butter, but you do a lot of loyalty stuff too, right? And loyalty. I everybody has that right now. Yeah. Well.

Larry Rubin: Listen, you need everyone’s having a tough time driving traffic into their establishments. Yeah. So if that loyalty program can get one more foot in the door, one more button, a seat that I think you’re going to see these small merchants trying everything because you see it, you know, the little guy is being is going out of business. You know, they’re being taken over by large corporations in every industry.  I mean, if you can see now there’s. So now the eye doctors, which you thought was the local guy in town is be the dentist office. You have doctor, dentist or this dental, you know, dentist office. So, you know, Amazon obviously is taking all the retailers out. So yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: And pharmacy now and like all right. Yeah.

Larry Rubin: Right. So I think the gift cards are away and the loyalty is away for the little guys to keep fighting, you know. And that’s what that’s all they’re trying to do. Just keep fighting.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah I mean in a competitive landscape. Makes sense no doubt about it. So the way businesses use gift cards keeps evolving. Is there innovation that you see coming that that you’re excited about or changes that you see coming or or do you really think it’s going to kind of maintain where it is?

Larry Rubin: Well, I think the biggest thing is, is more educating the merchants on how to use the gift cards, you know, so we can wait and for someone to come in and buy a gift card. And sure, it’s added revenue, but the gift card is such a great marketing tool, um, that it’s like, okay, so I have the gift card and if they’re not selling well, what else can I use them, you know? Well, can I preload a $5 card and drop them off at all the HR departments around town? Say, hey, next time you’re thinking of a corporate party, here’s $5, you know, or $10 or whatever. Think of us, you know. So it’s I think it’s it’s using them as marketing tools. Use them exposure, use them as referral tools. We have a company that uses the gift cards and employee reward program, where every employee has a card, and every month it gets pre-loaded with X amount of dollars and they have all month to use it. And then at the end of the month, it sets back to zero and it gets reactivated again. So it’s kind of the user loser program. So because that’s another problem that these small business owners are having is I can’t keep my employees. No one wants to work.  so well how can I keep them? Well, you have to incentivize it. Well, here’s a reward program to show your employees that you like them. You love them. You want to keep them. You want them happy. So again, another use of the gift card is to to reward your employees.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. If you can, if you can reward them and maybe, maybe even like on that card, you force them to do something cool and not spend it on, you know, I don’t know, toiletries. You know what I mean? Like, it’s only the restaurants or breweries or whatever you want to do. Yeah, that’s a good point. On the employee front. So Larry, if somebody is like, you’re listening to this and going, all right, I need to get a I really need to get a gift card strategy going here. What’s the best way to start with you guys?

Larry Rubin: Well, I just shoot me an email Larry at. Com. Okay. I sit in front of my. I work from home now ever since Covid, so I have to go by my office to get to the kitchen. So if I’m hungry, I have to check my email every time I check the email. Awful. An awful lot. So that would be the best you got. Shoot an email or I mean, if they want to give us a call, they can call our office. We try to make it easy. Eight. Swipeit  and then our website is just swipe it.com. So again we’re available to help out whether it’s a new program or an existing program that maybe just needs a little help, specialize in the small to mid sized merchants. But if a big guy wants to give us a call and say, hey, we need some help, you know, we’re not we’re willing to talk to them. To you.

Kevin Rosenquist: Really, to talk to them to.

Larry Rubin: Well, you know, it’s funny we do this, but we had a POS company bring, Sierra Nevada Brewing to us is a company and we do a reward program for them. They have 600 employees running this reward program, so now they only have two locations. So we could still say they’re kind of small to mid.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah they’re not small man. They’re huge.

Larry Rubin: But yeah. So we run. If you buy a gift card on their website we actually fulfill it for them.

Larry Rubin: Awesome. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: For you.

Larry Rubin: That’s great. Yeah. So if you’re looking for a gift here in Nevada. Come buy a gift card.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, look at that plug. All right. Maybe you’ll get a bonus from them. Let’s see you get a six pack or something.

Larry Rubin: Exactly. 

Kevin Rosenquist: Right? Yep. All right. Well, Larry, thanks so much for being here. The company swipeit. Really appreciate your time.

Larry Rubin: I appreciate it. And if you want me to come back I would love to.

Kevin Rosenquist: But sounds great to me. Thanks, Larry.

Larry Rubin: Thank you.