Apply HN: App to send, buy and maintain pre-paid gift cards

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.