Sainsbury's and Tesco are to help savers hit by the collapse of the Swindon based Christmas savings scheme, Farepak.
Tesco is to donate £250,000 to a government-backed fund to help those who have lost out.
The supermarket chain said it has agreed with the company's administrator that customers who were saving for Sainsbury's vouchers via the Farepak scheme should be able to receive 25% of the value of their savings.
Sainsbury's hoped to dispatch the vouchers to agents by the end of this month.
In a statement, it said, "While Sainsbury's has no involvement with Farepak and its operation, we now know that many of Farepak's customers had planned to use their savings to buy Sainsbury's vouchers .
"We hope that through this goodwill gesture we have been able to give these customers that opportunity, and we have gone some way to mitigating this difficult situation."
A Tesco spokesman said that through its donation to the Department for Trade and Industry-backed Farepak Response Fund it was "setting a lead it hopes other companies and organisations will follow.
Chancellor Gordon Brown called on other firms to follow suit, as thousands of less well-off families were left facing Christmas without any Christmas presents or Christmas food.
Mr Brown said, "While the circumstances surrounding Farepak are not in any way of our making, we are concerned about the impact on those affected," he said. "We now believe this scheme offers the best means of helping all Farepak customers to enjoy their Christmas."
He added, "It is terrible what has happened to people who have saved through this scheme to lose your money and therefore vouchers before Christmas, when you have been banking on that for your Christmas presents, is outrageous."
He concluded, "I hope that the whole of the retail trade will come behind what you might call a goodwill gesture at Christmas so that companies like that - that have let people down - don't let this mean that people have Christmases that they will want to forget."
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