Unredeemed holiday gift vouchers costing public money

One of the common customs at workplaces in Israel is the awarding of notes or shopping vouchers for the holidays. According to the updated report of the BUYME company for the Tishrei holidays, the average value of the holiday gift from employers is NIS 530. The report reports that the average value of a gift in the traditional high-tech industry is NIS 518, and in startups it is higher than that and stands at NIS 550. 

The record holder of the gifts is a company in the energy sector that gave its employees a gift worth NIS 1,460. It also appears that the fields that give the highest gift value are in the energy field, with a gift worth NIS 817; The environment field, with an average gift worth NIS 753, followed by law firms - with an average gift of NIS 700.

17% of companies in Israel chose to give as a holiday gift vouchers for fashion brands, 6% gave gifts in the culinary and food category and 3% chose to give a gift from the spa and hotel category. 

About NIS 670 million goes down the drain

Receiving shopping vouchers for the holiday is on the face of it happy, but it turns out that there is a phenomenon of not redeeming them among the employees, which results in the accumulation of unused money at the companies that provide the vouchers. According to Vaadim company data, in 2022 it is an amount of more than NIS 700 million unrealized - that is, 20% of the circulation of the gift notes issued throughout the year. 

It should be noted that in the same year the Bank of Israel conducted an inspection and discovered different findings - NIS 670 million received in bills that went down the drain, meaning that this is a total amount and not an annual accumulation. Realizing that this is a significant amount that is being wasted, the bank allowed all companies that issue Shih notes to allow the clearing of the notes through automatic bank services - that is, you can pay using the Shih notes wherever credit cards are accepted.