Business gift cards are an idea for corporate incentive plans, gifts for your business clients, or for the whole family during the holiday season or for any special occasion. Business gift cards are a great way to thank or impress your clients or employees and to maintain good relationships.

People are stressed today and have little time to gift shop. Companies are particularly stretched with limited staff and an abundance of work. Marketing and public relations department don't have time to "brainstorm" about what to give employees. Business gift cards act as a buffer for time spent wisely. Business gift cards can be used for purchases like spa visits, restaurants, movie tickets, travel, arts and craft classes and music.

Essentially, a gift card is like a gift certificate, but instead of being made with paper and presented like a coupon, it is made of plastic. Similar to a cash card, a business gift card is swiped at a register, at which point the funds assigned to that card are subtracted from its account. At this point the card is considered redeemed. If the card has multi-use value, the receiver can keep the card for another future purchase at the place where the card was assigned.

According to The National Retail Federation, gift card sales are expected to total $18.49 billion dollars by the end of 2005. That is a 6.6 percent increase over 2004. A holiday survey by Deloitte found gift cards will be the top gift choice this year, with 67 percent of consumers planning to give a gift card or certificate, up from 64 percent in 2004.