Giving Made Seamless

It is difficult to give the gift of an experience without giving someone cash (how impersonal) or a gift card to an event (hopefully they don’t lose it!).

Let me step back; cash is great but getting the gift of an experience is so much more memorable – not to mention thoughtful.

Currently the best way to give the gift of an experience is to get that special someone a gift card or gift certificate to the venue. Hopefully said venue has a gift card program, and hopefully you live close to the event space and had the forethought to not wait until the day of. But what if you don’t live close to the experience you are wishing to give, or what if you have mere hours (or minutes) until you intended to give the gift?

Enter GiftYa – the new peer-to-peer gifting app that allows you to send someone a gift to any national or local merchant in the United States.

GiftYa allows you to send a gift to any venue within seconds. Now you can send your brother in Colorado a gift to his local rock-climbing park even though you live in St Louis. Did Facebook just remind you that your bridesmaid’s birthday is today? No problem, GiftYa has your back and will make it look like you had the date set in your calendar for ages.

Making the gift giving experience better and faster is great, but the giving part is only half of the overall experience. What about the gift recipient? A gift is great, but if you can’t use the gift then you never get to appreciate it. How many of us have those unused gift cards in our wallets/purses/junk drawers at home? Isn’t it annoying when you’re out-and-about and you stop into somewhere that you have a gift card for – just not with you at the moment? This has happened to me several times, each time more annoying than the last.

According to MarketWatch, over $1 billion dollars of gift cards go unused each year. Many of these were gifts, intended for someone to experience, but were either lost or forgotten about. GiftYa has made using your gift much easier. The app allows you to use your gift via the existing Visa® or Mastercard® already in your wallet. The company has partnered with Visa® and Mastercard® to use card-linking technology to make gift cards and gift certificates obsolete.

No longer do you need that piece of plastic that could take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Once you receive your gift via text message, you enroll your Visa® or Mastercard® and then use the linked card to pay as you normally would. GiftYa receives a notification that you used your enrolled card at the merchant which you received a gift to and credits your card for up to the gift amount. Now a gift recipient can link multiple gifts to a card in their wallet and no longer worry about forgetting to bring multiple gift cards or throw away unused dollars.

Giving is important, and the process of giving a gift shouldn’t be filled with friction. Jim Rohn famously said “Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have”.

Give more. Give often.

Written by Matthew Watkins, Finance Manager

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