Remember the “good, old days” when you could give someone a gift of cash by tucking a couple of dollars in a greeting card and mailing it? A couple of dollars??? Well, I did say old days…

I’d never send cash now and I’m not real sure about all those gift cards hanging by the cash register at the grocery store. Who knows who might have messed with them? Besides they are so impersonal!

Amazon has come up with more alternatives than you could imagine to send a gift card, some of them are virtual and some physical. With and without greeting cards.

Here are your options:

• Email through Amazon: Your giftee gets an email with an image of the gift card you selected and your personal message in the email. To use the funds, simply type the claim code into the appropriate box on the order form. Voilá!
• Send a gift card by mail: This is the same process – and probably the same print service company providing the card – that I tested last April when I personalized a Starbucks card. Pretty nifty and it’s the real McCoy!
• Print at home: You get an print-ready PDF of the gift card to print on your desktop printer. What a thought – you do all the work and you pay for the printing! Here’s what your PDF will look like with the claim code for your giftee:

There you have it! Gift cards online, offline, and both.

And it used to be so simple!

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