For retailers, gift cards are gift that keeps giving

Restaurant gift cards are the most popular type, with 31 percent of card recipients getting those, according to the report, titled Gift Cards Keep on Giving. Discount store cards were next in popularity, received by 28 percent of those getting cards. And despite the growth of digital or e-cards, physical cards remain much more popular: Roughly three-quarters (76 percent) of recipients say they received only plastic cards, while 6 percent received only the electronic variety. The rest received some combination of both.

Brick-and-mortar retailers and those with a physical and an online presence (omni-channel retailers) are reaping most of the gift-card expenditures. So far, more than four-fifths (85 percent) of those who began redeeming their cards did so from either brick-and-mortar or omni-channel retailers. This accounted for 71 percent of all spending made with those cards. Shopping centers are sharing the wealth too, with more than half (52 percent) of recipients redeeming their cards there.

Click-and-collect shopping, whereby shoppers buy online and pick up the merchandise at a store, is popular with the gift-card crowd too — about one-third (31 percent) of those who have spent some of their gift cards so far have shopped this way, and 59 percent of them went on to buy something else when they picked up the merchandise at the store.

As the report’s title indicates, gift cards really are also the holiday gifts that keep on giving — most of them are redeemed after the holidays. Retailers generally only log gift-card sales when they are redeemed, not when they are sold, so these particular holiday sales show up in January and beyond. January was the most popular month for redemption, when about one-third (34 percent) used them. Just 28 percent of recipients began redeeming their cards before January. There was a lull in February, and the usage has picked up this month, when 23 percent are expected to use them. Twenty-eight percent will redeem them in April or beyond.