News

Coinstar offers no-fee gift cards to kiosk-host sites

March 13, 2011

Coinstar has launched a new incentive for consumers cashing in coins — no-fee gift cards at the very store where shoppers exchange coins.

According to the The New York Times, consumers can avoid the company's 9.8-percent service fee (in the United States) by choosing the gift-card option. Although Coinstar already has gift-card partnerships with a variety of businesses, including Amazon.com, Starbucks and iTunes, the pilot program dispensing gift cards from the stores hosting the coin machines is underway at Albertsons and Stop & Shop supermarket chains.

Basically, the retailers pay Coinstar's service fee, which is a win-win for the owner of the 19,000 coin-sorting machines throughout North America and England. It still receives transaction fees while also receiving exposure from the retailers' advertising campaigns that announce the service.

Engle Saez, vice president for consumer experience at Coinstar, told The New York Times that the program has enormous potential.

"We're trying to appeal to those consumers who are fee-averse by putting a product in front of them that we know is highly, highly relevant to them," he said in the interview. "To convert coins into a grocery store gift card — that one was a no-brainer that skipped over a lot of brains here for many years."