Gift cards in Wallet
- Badge
- Yes
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- The overlap, and both do it well
Compare
Good at gift cards, and gift cards are not everything
Badge is a solid gift-card-first platform for Wallet distribution, and for a business that wants exactly gift cards it is a reasonable answer. The comparison only becomes interesting once the same programme needs to carry something other than a gift card.
Updated
At a glance
- Badge
- Gift cards distributed to Wallet
- 7Konto
- Gift cards plus prepaid, coupons, B2B2E
- Shared
- Both issue to Apple and Google Wallet
- Divide
- Programmes beyond gift cards
Updated
When a gift card stops being enough
A gift card is a single balance, bought by one person for another, spent down to zero and then forgotten. Everything about it is simple, which is why a gift-card-first product can do it well.
The programmes that follow are not simple in the same way. An employee allowance has limits and an allow-list. A fuel card needs funds reserved before dispensing. A campus has several merchants settling separately under one employer.
Those are ledger and rules problems rather than distribution problems, and a platform built around gift cards is not the natural place for them.
- One card carrying several budgets with different rules is a B2B2E requirement, not a gift card one.
- Reserving funds before a transaction completes is specific to fuel and similar cases.
- Settling several merchants separately under one programme is a multi-tenant problem.
Side by side
Where the coverage differs.
Prepaid balances and top-ups
- Badge
- Limited
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- A present becoming a regular account
Digital coupons and promotions
- Badge
- Limited
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Cross-marketing between chains
Corporate and B2B2E accounts
- Badge
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Employee allowances and fleets
Limits, categories, allow-lists
- Badge
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Enforced at authorisation, not on a receipt
POS terminal processing
- Badge
- Limited
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Spending at the counter, on existing hardware
PSP gateway embedding
- Badge
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Reaching a whole merchant portfolio at once
Choosing between them
If it is only gift cards, ever
A gift-card-first product is simpler, and simpler is worth a lot.
If gift cards are the first of several
The second programme is where the cost of the wrong platform shows up, usually a year in.
If B2B2E is anywhere on the roadmap
Corporate accounts, limits and per-merchant settlement are not features to add later; they are architecture.
Questions about this
What is a closed-loop payment platform?
It lets you issue and process payments inside your own ecosystem — gift cards, prepaid balances, employee accounts — without routing every transaction through Visa, Mastercard or a bank. The funds stay in your system, so the fees, the data and the customer experience are yours to set.
How is 7Konto different from PassKit or Badge?
Those are Wallet pass products: they distribute passes, they do not process payments. 7Konto is a closed-loop payment platform with a ledger, transaction processing, POS integration, an online checkout widget and PSP embedding. A card issued here carries a real balance that is charged in real time.
Is this the Starbucks model?
The same economics, without the app. Starbucks built a custom application customers had to install, and holds a very large prepaid float as a result. 7Konto delivers the closed-loop side of that through Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, so there is no app to develop and no install step to lose people at — and through PSP embedding it extends to a whole merchant portfolio rather than one brand.
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