The Best Gift Cards for Teenagers in Ireland

Why teenagers are hard to buy for

Not because they are ungrateful. There are two real reasons, and both are about timing rather than temperament.

The first is turnover. A fourteen-year-old's interests move faster than a shopping trip. The game everyone in the year is playing in October is not the one they were playing in June, and the brand that was in every photo at the start of the summer has quietly gone by September. Buy in advance and you are betting on a moving target.

The second is precision. Teenage taste is specific in a way adult taste often is not. An adult will wear a jumper in nearly the right colour. A fifteen-year-old, generally, will not. The gap between right and almost right is wider at that age, and everyone in the room knows when a gift has landed on the wrong side of it.

Which is why gift cards do well with this age group, and why the wrong gift card still misses. A card for one shop is the same guess as the jumper, with an extra step added.

The gaming problem: right hobby, wrong platform

Gaming looks like the safe answer and it is the easiest thing to get wrong, because every platform runs its own closed currency.

A PlayStation Store gift card buys digital items only. Sony's Irish site is blunt about the limit: PlayStation Store gift cards can only be used on digital products at PlayStation Store, and physical products or merch from PlayStation Gear cannot be bought with one. If the teenager wanted a controller, the card will not stretch to it.

A Nintendo eShop card is a 16-character prepaid code redeemed into a Nintendo Account, and the balance stays inside that account. A Steam Wallet Code credits a Steam account, which is a different account again.

Roblox has the tightest terms of the lot. Its Irish gift card conditions state that to redeem one you must be over 18 years old or obtain consent from a parent or guardian, and that gift cards must be redeemed in full and cannot be partially redeemed. On the other hand they do not expire and carry no inactivity fee, which is more than several high-street cards manage.

None of that is an argument against gaming brands. Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Roblox and Steam are all in the OptionsCard catalogue. It is an argument against choosing the platform on a teenager's behalf, in a shop, three weeks before their birthday. Redeeming an OptionsCard is the moment the platform gets picked, and by then the person picking is the one who actually plays.

What else is in the catalogue for this age group

Gaming is a stereotype about teenagers, and the catalogue is wider than the stereotype.

Clothes and trainers make up the largest group. Penneys, River Island, H&M, Zalando, Mango, TK Maxx and Brown Thomas cover clothing; Schuh, Skechers, Clarks, Foot Locker, Adidas.com, Life Style Sports and Intersport Elverys cover trainers and sports kit. Boots.ie and Rituals cover skincare and beauty.

Food is the other reliable one, and it is where small amounts go furthest. Just Eat, Nando's, Milano and Caffe Nero all take gift cards, and €25 spent on a takeaway with friends registers more with a sixteen-year-old than €25 towards something sensible.

Then there are the ones that are not really a category: Ticketmaster for a gig, Booktokens for a reader, Spas.ie for someone who would rather have an afternoon out than an object. Because an OptionsCard can be redeemed for gift cards from over 70 brands, none of those choices has to be made at the point of purchase. The full list sits on one page, the OptionsCard brands directory.

Five things to check before you buy

• Age and account rules. Roblox requires the person redeeming to be over 18 or to have a parent or guardian's consent. Nintendo restricts PayPal top-ups to account holders aged 18 or over. For anyone under 18, assume a parent is going to be involved somewhere in the process, and check the platform's parental controls while you are there.
• Fees. Some multi-store cards take a handling charge at purchase or a monthly deduction from the balance. An OptionsCard has no purchase fee, and nothing is taken off the balance for non-use.
• Expiry. Roblox states that its cards do not expire. Plenty of others do. An OptionsCard holds its full value for five years.
• Region. Platform codes are generally tied to the store of the country they were bought for, which matters if the teenager's console account is set to somewhere else.
• Whether they can change their mind. Part of an OptionsCard can be redeemed now and the rest left for later, and any part of it can be re-gifted as a new card. A Roblox gift card, by contrast, has to be redeemed in full in one go.

Send one they will actually use

Pick the value, add a message, and leave the brand to them. Buy an OptionsCard at app.optionscard.ie/buy-gift-card and it arrives by email or SMS in seconds, with no fee taken off the top and five years to spend it.