Town and city gift cards see sales rise to €17.4m

Colin Munro, David O'Neil, Davin Doherty and Mark Cunningham - The Miconex Ireland team

Financial technology firm Miconex which delivers the Irish Town & City Gift Card networks, recorded sales of €17.4m last year, a 65% rise on 2024.

The gift cards aim to boost local spending and have been rolled across a number of Irish towns including Macroom, Dungarvan & West Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick, Letterkenny, Tipperary and Waterford.

Miconex has estimated that the €17.4m will drive 335,000 specific visits to high streets and shopping districts in 2026, based on estimates of three trips into town per gift card. Cards have to be spent in person, driving footfall and spend to participating businesses across a range of sectors.

A number of chambers and business organisations have upgraded their paper ‘shop local’ programmes to physical and digital gift cards with Mullingar Chamber, Dungarvan & West Waterford Chamber, County Monaghan and Macroom Business Association making the move from paper voucher schemes in 2025.

Miconex said corporate sales were a key driver of gift card sales in 2025, driven by the increase in the Small Benefit Exemption to €1,500 in January 2025 and estimates that around 65% of its €17.4m in sales in 2025 were business orders, primarily organisations purchasing local gift cards for their employees.

Gift Card & Voucher Association data shows the popularity of multi-store gift cards like Town & City Gift Cards continues to increase, a rise that is partially attributed to a consumer hesitancy to commit to a single brand gift card. In addition to its 16 programmes in Ireland, Miconex operates 97 Town & City Gift Cards programmes in the UK and 72 Downtown Gift Cards initiatives in Canada and the USA.

Colin Munro, CEO of Miconex, said: "Many of our clients are ‘shop local’ pioneers, and have put their trust in us to evolve their paper vouchers into high-tech physical and digital gift cards that meet the needs of today’s customers – or even to start a new gift card from scratch," he said. 

"Their vision is paying dividends as shop local sales soar across the country. Town & City Gift Cards offer choice, support for local and ease of use in one card – no other gift card can compete on these three factors combined. In 2026, we aim to bring the power of local to even more communities across Ireland.”