Ask ten Nigerians what a gift card is, and most will describe the same thing: something you receive from someone, redeem at a store, and forget about. That description made sense ten years ago. It does not describe how gift cards in Nigeria work today.
Gift Cards Are No Longer Just Gifts
The traditional idea of a gift card is that it is a present. Someone buys it for you, you spend it at one brand, and the story ends there. Digital commerce has quietly rewritten that story.
Today a gift card in Nigeria might arrive from a cousin in Houston, or it might be something you bought for yourself ten minutes ago because you needed to pay for a subscription. It might sit in your notes app for six months because you do not shop at that brand. It might become cash in your bank account before the end of the day.
That is a very different object from a birthday present. A gift card now behaves like digital money with a brand attached to it. It can be bought, used, held or turned into Naira. Once you look at it that way, a lot of what is happening in the Nigerian gift card market starts to make sense.
