Spend on prepaid gift cards is on the rise this holiday season, as a significant majority (70%) of shoppers plan to purchase gift cards this season, according to an interim holiday spending report released by Stored Value Solutions, a provider of gift cards and stored value services. According to the report, 92% of shoppers plan to spend either the same amount or more on gift cards than they spent last year. And for the eighth straight year, gift cards have been the most desired holiday gift. SVS has been tracking gift card data for nearly a decade, but this is the first report to be issued publicly on this sector of holiday retail spending, a category whose numbers are difficult to capture in the aggregate, the company stated. The inaugural report provides detailed break downs of gift card spend by sector, geography and demographics. SVS’s research is tracked against real-time activity the company sees firsthand, including first-time gift card sales, increases or decreases in same-merchant sales, and average dollar amounts loaded onto the gift cards.