82698beecardClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKbeecard is the gift card dedicated to the children's activities market. It offers grandparents, aunts, uncles and family friends the opportunity to give the gift of a vast choice children's activities to a special child in their life. For years the only gift card options for those buying gifts for children have revolved around toys, games, and one-off experiences or days out. Never before has the potentially life-changing gift of a series of classes at a chosen activity been possible. Traditionally, gifts for children's activities have been limited to purchasing vouchers for a specific provider, thus limiting the choice of the recipient to the one activity chosen. beecard changes this and allows someone to gift the choice of any participating activity provider, offering the parent or child recipient the chance to choose what they want to do. beecard's dedicated app allows recipients to use our map-based search functionality to find activities local to them. They can find out about an activity within the app and when they have chosen what they want to do, our technology takes them through to the provider's website to book their space and pay using their beecard balance. To date, we have integrated beecard with a single booking platform giving it access to 7% of the children's activity market. This integration has meant there are up to 1400 activity providers participating. This project develops the technology that will enable beecard to integrate with every booking platform on the market. Such a development will open up the choice of activities within beecard to potentially 20,000 providers across the UK. If a customer has a beecard, the entire children's activity market will potentially be at their fingertips. This level of choice from a gift card in this sector has never been possible. Alongside developing the technology to widen the number of providers who can accept beecard, this project will also develop a system to enable automation of payments to providers upon card redemption. This simplifies and reduces the timeframe from when a card is redeemed to the money being in the provider's bank account. Opening up beecard in this manner helps us allow activity providers to tap into the gifting market like never before. This brings new potential customers and new revenue streams into the market at a time when recovery and growth in a post-COVID economy are essential. Many businesses in this sector have been shut for long periods and have been devastated by the pandemic. Many of these businesses are small owner-operated organisations serving local communities, supporting local people. All are run with passion and dedication, mainly by women entrepreneurs. All of these things mean that it is incredibly important to assist this sector and help it generate new growth in the coming months and years. beecard does this in a new, innovative way that will help providers, parents and their children make the most of all the opportunities children's activities create.