I’ve spent more than a decade watching gift cards evolve—and trying to push them to be more personal, more secure, and more useful for real people. Now, with AI entering the chat (literally), we’re seeing a whole new wave of innovation across the industry.

At eGifter, we’re not just testing AI gift card tools. We’re putting them into production and seeing how they play out in live gifting moments, especially during the holidays. Some are shopper-facing. Others are invisible but critical on the backend. A few are still on the horizon or coming fast.

Here are five ways AI is already changing the gift card experience this holiday season, based on what I’m seeing up close.

This year, gift card personalization isn’t just picking the right brand—it’s designing the moment.

With the launch of eGifter AI Personalization™, holiday shoppers can now generate custom images to accompany their digital gift cards using just a few words. Type a prompt like “Santa surfing in Maui” or “A llama in a snow globe” and a generative AI model will instantly create a unique image that’s delivered with the eGift. The result? A more meaningful, visual gifting experience—no design skills (or clipart) required.

Live now at eGifter.com and available to our merchant partners at eGifterMerchants.com, this tool turns every gift card into a little piece of holiday art that is perfect for corporate gifts, Secret Santa exchanges, and last-minute “thoughtful” moments alike.

While personalized gifting gets more creative on the front end, it’s also getting safer on the back end—thanks to AI tools that step in before the gift is even sent.

This year, we launched eGifter AI SmartScreen™, a real-time moderation tool that automatically reviews customer-submitted text and images to detect profanity, hate speech, nudity, and other content that shouldn’t slip through. It’s powered by models trained on years of moderation data—and works in milliseconds.

Most consumers will never notice it, and that’s the point. It replaces the need for manual reviews (or awkward clean-up later), helping brands stay protected without slowing down the magic of real-time personalization.

For merchants, it means hours saved, lower risk, and fewer humans exposed to things no one should have to see. For shoppers, it keeps the experience fast, fun, and safe.

The holidays bring joy and, unfortunately, a surge in fraud. From fake promo claims to account takeovers, digital gift card fraud is fast-moving and costly. But now, AI is helping to stay one step ahead.

eGifter AI Shield™ is a set of machine learning–powered fraud detection tools that flag patterns easy to miss with manual review. In one recent case, eGifter’s AI tools surfaced suspicious activity inside of one of our merchant partners—identifying a pattern that would have otherwise gone unnoticed without the power of AI.

These models are getting smarter all the time. They adapt to new attack methods, refine thresholds as they learn, and help reduce fraud without adding friction. That means fewer false declines, better approval rates, and more seamless experiences.

This protection is especially important for brands using eGifter’s B2C Merchant Solutions, where high volume and instant delivery can create new vulnerabilities. AI helps keep things running smoothly—and securely.

We’re starting to see the earliest signs of AI agents playing a role in holiday gifting. People can already ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to get recommendations for gift ideas—including gift cards—based on a few simple prompts.

These tools are in the early stages of becoming fully transactional, laying the groundwork for a major shift in consumer behavior. In the near future, shoppers won’t just click and browse. They’ll ask an assistant to “send a thank-you gift to my team,” and expect it to handle the details.

As this begins to unfold rapidly in 2026, merchants will need systems that can interact with those agents. At eGifter, we’re actively preparing our platform—and the merchant programs we support—for the future with eGifter Agentic Commerce™, so we’re ready when AI steps in as the shopper’s agent.

At eGifter, we’re not building AI tools in a vacuum. We launched eGifter.ai as more than just a tech showcase—it’s a collaboration space built for merchants, developers, and anyone in the gift card ecosystem who’s thinking seriously about the future of AI.

Why? Because we’ve been here before. When e-commerce took off, gift cards got left behind—jammed into product templates that didn’t fit, creating messy workflows and missed opportunities. As an industry, we will work together to ensure we don’t repeat that mistake.

This time, as AI reshapes commerce again, we’re opening our roadmap early. Through eGifter.ai, merchants can propose new tools, vote on upcoming features, and weigh in on how AI should be applied to gifting—from personalization to fraud prevention to search and discovery.

So if you’re running a gift card program and thinking, “Why hasn’t anyone built X yet?”—we want to hear from you.

What excites me most is that none of this is hypothetical. These changes are already happening—some you can see, some you can’t, and some that are on the immediate horizon. As shopping behaviors evolve at the speed of AI, merchants will need their tech partners to keep pace with these trends. Those who keep pace can maintain or even gain market share, while laggards will be left behind in a flash.

At eGifter, this holiday season is not just about deploying new tools, but also about learning from them. What resonates with shoppers? What saves merchants time or protects their brand? What still needs to be built?

If you’re thinking about the future of gifting—or trying to make sense of what AI means for your own gift card program—let’s talk.

Until then, here’s to more thoughtful gifts, more convenient and engaging shopping and gifting experiences, reduced fraud, and a glimpse into a future where AI truly transforms the holiday season.

Happy gifting.

Shelley