Problem:
1. Still it’s very manual process to buy someone gift card.
2. One can use vendors website(for e.g. https://www.starbucks.com/card) to buy and send soft copy of gift card to recipient using email, which recipient needs to retrieve every time they want to use the gift card.
3. Problem with Gyft: To buy closed loop gift card for prospective recipient, one needs to know the recipient’s buying habits quite well. For example, the person doesn't like coffee that much and you give them a 'Starbucks' gift card. Also Gyft is not available outside USA.
4. Customer has to carry hardcover gift cards every time they shop so there are higher chances of them being misplaced.
5. If customers fail to spend the full value of their gift cards, unspent gift cards dollars get expired OR they are forced to buy unnecessary or bit expensive item to just use the remaining gift card amount.
6. Customer neither gets any card expiry notification nor any promotional notification.
Solution:
Our idea is to develop a Gift card service, possibly a mobile app and a web app, where one person can gift any dollar amount as a credit to another using their mobile number. Recipient can then use that amount as credit to purchase any company's gift card and buy the thing they really want and have control over the amount they want to spend. For example, if someone gives you $100 and you want to buy an iPhone cover for say $50, then you transfer $50 to Apple Gift Card and buy yourself that cover. Then you can use remain $50 with say Starbucks. Moreover, credit never expires, so your money/gift is not wasted. Customers also receives notification about special offers from gift card providers, so they can choose when/where to spend their credit. For example, Apple sells gift cards at 20% off, our customers can get benefit out of that, making the most of the gift they were given.
Fraud can be handled in following way:
Technical point of view we will keep following measure in place:
- Limited accessibility to the account due to an unauthorized transaction.
- Account verification via phone number and email.
- Prompting users to update their account information from time to time.
- Email and text Confirmation after sending money and receiving money.
We also believe that fraud is an awareness problem. So, we will keep consumer aware of how the common fraud looks like and how to stop them with appropriate measures. Please check the sample awareness link for pay pal.
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/security/common-scams
Solution: Our idea is to develop a Gift card service, possibly a mobile app and a web app, where one person can gift any dollar amount as a credit to another using their mobile number. Recipient can then use that amount as credit to purchase any company's gift card and buy the thing they really want and have control over the amount they want to spend. For example, if someone gives you $100 and you want to buy an iPhone cover for say $50, then you transfer $50 to Apple Gift Card and buy yourself that cover. Then you can use remain $50 with say Starbucks. Moreover, credit never expires, so your money/gift is not wasted. Customers also receives notification about special offers from gift card providers, so they can choose when/where to spend their credit. For example, Apple sells gift cards at 20% off, our customers can get benefit out of that, making the most of the gift they were given.
Any questions? Happy to answer.
Fraud is going to be your biggest problem (besides getting users). How will you handle it?
Fraud can be handled in following way: Technical point of view we will keep following measure in place: - Limited accessibility to the account due to an unauthorized transaction. - Account verification via phone number and email. - Prompting users to update their account information from time to time. - Email and text Confirmation after sending money and receiving money.
We also believe that fraud is an awareness problem. So, we will keep consumer aware of how the common fraud looks like and how to stop them with appropriate measures. Please check the sample awareness link for pay pal. https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/security/common-scams
What you think about the idea in general? Do you think there is gap in market for Gift card services? Gift card market is more than $200bn in merchant sales in US alone. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2014/04/16/prepaid...