Gifting has been part of human culture for as long as humans have existed; it's a straightforward way to thank or motivate someone.
Walk through any Indonesian company over a single year, and gifting is happening constantly.
-
-
- A sales team hits target and gets rewarded.
- A dealer network needs a channel loyalty push to keep volume up during a slow quarter.
- An employee crosses 5 years of service, and HR wants to mark it.
- New hires get a welcome gift.
- Top clients get a thank-you through the customer loyalty program.
- And then there's the festive calendar: Lebaran, Christmas, year-end, and the rest.
-
The numbers behind this are sizeable. Indonesia's gift card market was worth roughly USD 2.37 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach about USD 3.68 billion by 2030, according to a Q1 2026 market databook from ResearchAndMarkets; and the trend shows no sign of slowing. Globally, the corporate rewards platform market is approaching USD 1 trillion, with a projected crossing of USD 1.3 trillion by 2030.
The act of gifting itself hasn't changed. How it's delivered has, and a lot of the old mechanics haven't kept up.
Where Corporate Reward Platforms Fall Short in Indonesia Today
1. Gifting is treated as an afterthought
Culturally, gifting happens all the time; strategically, it's rarely treated that way. Reward spend still tends to sit scattered across HR, marketing, procurement, and wellness budgets rather than as its own measurable line.
That's a missed opportunity, because the returns are real. Gallup's recognition research has found that employees who receive high-quality recognition are about 45% less likely to leave within two years; a number that's hard to act on if the spend behind it isn't even tracked.
2. Waste and mismatch
Indonesia, and Southeast Asia broadly, is religiously and culturally diverse; a single hamper design was never going to fit everyone it's sent to. Cookies and sweets don't work for a diabetic recipient.
Even inside "safe" categories, taste varies. Survey data from Jakpat, one of Indonesia's research agencies, shows Lebaran hampers are still dominated by dry cookies, packaged snacks, and groceries; appreciated in the moment, but rarely tied back to the brand that sent it.
Gifting is meant to be a moment where someone feels seen. Every mismatch is Rupiah spent producing the opposite feeling.
3. Logistics get in the way
Indonesia's gifting is still built around physical distribution, across a country of more than 17,000 islands. Shipping hampers to all side of the archipelago is slow, costly, and fragile.
In practice, that means damaged vouchers that are hard to redeem, rewards that land after the festive window has closed, and a logistics bill on top of the reward itself.
4. Rewards expire, quietly
Unredeemed gift card value is a well-documented problem worldwide; companies like Roblox, Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot all carry millions of dollars in gift cards that never get claimed.
According to Journal of Accountancy (Kile, C. O. 2007. Accounting for Gift Cards), roughly 10–19% of gift card balances go unredeemed depending on issuer and category.
A CreditCards.com study conducted by YouGov.com, in the US alone, somewhere between USD 21–23 billion sits unused at any given time, held across roughly 47% of American adults' wallets.
5. Cash rewards come with their own drawbacks
Cash has traditionally been used for a wide range of rewarding occasions across Asia, but it carries real friction.
It's a taxable gift, meaning employers are expected to withhold income tax on cash bonuses and report it properly. In customer and channel-partner relationships, the problem sharpens further: an unstructured cash transfer to a client, procurement contact, or government-adjacent counterpart can start to resemble gratification rather than a reward.
A Different Way to Gift
This is exactly the gap Tadakado, Tada's flexible gift voucher, was built to close.
1. A programmable voucher layer
Tadakado works like a multi-merchant gift card. Clients purchase a set number of vouchers upfront at a fixed denomination and custom design, and Tada handles setup, delivery, and merchant fulfillment end-to-end.
A self-serve dashboard for campaign management is on its way; until then, the Tada team runs each campaign directly, and a recipient list with a delivery window is all it takes to get a batch moving.
Either way, gifting stops being a once-a-year procurement scramble and becomes a standing layer across employee rewards, channel incentives, sales incentives, and customer loyalty.
2. Less waste, less mismatch
Once a Tadakado voucher is claimed, the recipient chooses from 30+ categories: e-wallet top-ups, gold bars from Antam, shopping & F&B vouchers, electronics, gadgets, bill payments, mobile credit, and more. Recipients can even pay QRIS directly with their balance, anywhere it's accepted.
This shifts the personalization problem to the recipient rather than procurement; they choose reward or gifts that suit them best within the range of the Tadakado balance they own.
3. Delivery in minutes, not days
Tadakado comes as physical (paper or PVC, fully customizable) or digital. Digital reaches a recipient anywhere in the time it takes to send a WhatsApp message, email, or SMS.
No shipping cost regardless of volume or geography, no transit damage, no missed festive window. Physical cards are still there for the moments that call for something tangible; ceremonial gifts, offline events, gifts for all employees.
4. Less value left on the table
Tadakado is built the opposite way from a single-brand card. With 30+ redemption categories and QRIS opening the door to roughly 40 million Indonesian merchants, warungs and malls included, recipients are far more likely to find something worth using.
Balances stack, too; a Rp 100K remainder from one voucher combines with a Rp 250K voucher from the next occasion, with no minimum spend forcing small balances to go to waste.
5. A cleaner alternative to cash
Tadakado addresses both sides of the cash problem. Culturally, it reads as a gift rather than a transfer, arriving with branding, packaging, and a personal message.
On tax and compliance, Tadakado runs on a one-time purchase model: the client buys a set amount of vouchers upfront, and that's the transaction that gets booked, one line item, one invoice.
Wrap up!
Gifting in Indonesia is no longer a once-a-year hamper procurement cycle; it's becoming a continuous function that HR, sales, and marketing teams run across performance milestones, sales incentives, channel incentives, customer thank-yous, work anniversaries, and the festive calendar.
Companies that treat gifting as an operating layer, instead of a periodic scramble, tend to see it compound; in retention, in sales motivation, and in relationship quality over time.
If that's the direction you're headed, Tadakado is built for it. Order your Tadakado vouchers here and see how simple corporate gifting can be.
.png)
