Amazon And Walmart Push eGift Cards In Final Hours Before Holidays

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 1:19PM EST · Published Dec 24, 6:04AM EST

Amazon And Walmart Push eGift Cards In Final Hours Before Holidays — © David Ryder / Getty Images

It is almost too late to order items online so they can be delivered before Christmas. Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) have shifted their marketing efforts to the sale of eGift cards which can still be given on Christmas day.

eGift cards can be used at any time to buy items online, or in stores, in Walmart’s case. They can be sent via email, text or messaging apps. Once the eGift card has been purchased, it can usually be sent in about five minutes.

The cards are ordered online the same way merchandise is through the normal check out process. Amazon and Walmart have suggested eGift card gifts at check out. Some companies have paid money to get these positions on the check out page.

Amazon’s base eGift cards come in amounts of $25, $50, $75, $100, and $150. The sum can also be customized. The cards can be personalized with photos and animation.

The base Walmart cards come in amounts of $20, $25, $50, $75, $100, $150, and $200. The amount can be customized as well.

Walmart eGift cards are broken into several categories. They include travel, restaurant, lifestyle, prepaid mobile minutes, and standard cards.

Time has almost run out for overnight delivery and in Walmart’s case the hours people can shop, so the two companies have pivoted to another means to get last minute customers

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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

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A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.