Collaborative gifting startup Giftiki is launching its first mobile presence with a new iPhone App. Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to give their friends the perfect gift. And Giftiki leverages social ties and game mechanics to get users to contribute to the gifting process and add more money to the pool.
Giftiki users can sign in via Facebook, which will automatically pull in friends and their birthdays. Givers choose a friend and decide on an amount to give. Giftiki now allows users to invite their friends to gift a specific individual. After selecting an amount to gift, wrapping, and sending a Giftiki, a pop up window will appear that shows the giver what friends they have in common with the individual they just gifted. Users can then choose friends and write a personal message that invites them to join and chip in. This message posts to Facebook allowing more people spread the love.
Other friends can throw in additional money, which the gift receiver can redeem with an AMEX gift card, on Amazon.com or with a gift card for select retailers, including: Macy’s, Starbucks, The Sport’s Authority and The Cheesecake Factory.
The iPhone all will deliver you instant birthday notifications for your friends, a birthday newsfeed of gifts sent and received, and allows users to set a reminder to send gifts on a recipient’s special day. In addition, Apple push notifications alert users each time someone sends them a gift.
A mobile component makes a lot of sense for Giftiki, and allows users to send gifts from everywhere, on the go.
Giftiki recently raised just under $1 million in Series A financing, led by investor Tim Draper and including VC firms Crosslink Capital, GoldHill Capital and Transmedia Capital.
Giftiki is defining a new social commerce platform with the development of its collaborative gifting engine. It allows users to send small amounts of money that contributes to a collective fund, empowering the recipient to buy something they actually want. Giftiki’s services expand beyond birthdays to any gifting situation- holidays, graduations, fundraising and weddings and baby showers.
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