By Rhys Baker

Grow Clay County is leading the way in gift certificate technology. Traditionally, Grow Clay County has issued gift certificates to be used across Clay County in paper form, which are used much like a check with local merchants. With the creation of their new ClayCo app, the organization can now issue certificates in e-credit card form via a program called Yiftee. Grow Clay County Director Natalie Muruato explains why the organization thinks the change was needed, “Some of our members don’t accept checks anymore. So that limits where people can spend the funding. This gift card can be stored in your electronic wallet, such as an Apple Wallet. You can go to the website to see your balance, and it sends reminders to use it. A lot of times if the checks got lost, the bank would just refund us the money, and we don’t want that. We want it to go back to the we want it to go to the businesses. We want people to shop local.”

Muruato said the process should be seamless for merchants because the e-gift certificates act like credit cards, with Grow Clay County controlling where the funds can be spent at local merchants, “There’s a map on the site so you can see all the retailers. Because sometimes merchants won’t use it, some will, and we try to tell people who will use it, but it changes from day to day. So you can update it and know where to spend it. Plus, there’s no personal information, but it’ll tell us how much money is being spent locally at these businesses so that we can show the impact. Data is critical to show the impact of what local shopping can do for our county.”

Paper community checks will still be available for a while. Muruato has researched this change for quite some time, including reaching out to other communities to see what they like and dislike about various e-gift certificate companies. The Yiftee e-card service designs community cards specifically for chambers, cities, downtowns, and main street organizations.