Skype Co-Founder Leads $5.5M Round In Social Gifting Service Wrapp

Wrapp, a social gifting service, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by Atomico, the venture capital firm formed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström. Zennström also joined Wrapp’s board of directors. Creandum participated in the round as well.

Co-founded by Rebtel and SendIt founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn and others, Wrapp lets friends give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends.

With Wrapp, which offers iPhone, Android and web apps, you sign in via your Facebook account, and you can then tap the Celebration tab on the app, browse your friends or major events, and select the person you want to send a gift card to. All available gift card offers for that friend are automatically listed.

You can then select the retailer and the gift card offer you want, write your celebration greeting, select a delivery date, enter payment details (if you’re contributing extra funds to a free gift card), and send the gift. Your friend will be notified and celebrated through Facebook and the Wrapp application.

Merchants can actually specify the amounts they’d like to offer via the service, and target specific demographics of users with gift card options.

For now, Wrapp only operates with retailers in Sweden but will use the new funding to soon expand to the U.S. and U.K. Current retail partners in Weden include the country’s largest sporting goods retailer Stadium, designer underwear brand Björn Borg, street fashion brand WeSC, and home improvement chain Clas Ohlson among 15 others.

Gift cards are actually a $100 billion industry in the U.S. so Wrapp could be entering a lucrative market. Of course, partnering with mainstream retailers could help the company’s expansion in the U.S. According to AllThingsD, Wrapp is looking to partner with retailers like Best Buy and Target at launch.