移动支付围剿塑料礼品卡

    Gyft联合创始人兼首席执行官文尼·林厄姆有一个目标：淘汰塑料礼品卡。

    正是这个构想激励着位于旧金山的初创公司Gyft，该公司提供的一款同名移动应用程序让用户能够购买礼品卡，然后直接通过智能手机赠送礼品卡。用户可以购买近150家零售商【包括亚马逊（Amazon）、耐克（Nike）及盖璞百货集团旗下的老海军连锁商店（Old Navy）】发行的礼品卡，而且可以把这些礼品卡发送给使用这款应用程序的任何其他用户。从理论上讲，在手机上查看礼品卡上的未使用余额要比实物礼品卡更加方便。

    获得谷歌风投公司（Google Ventures）融资支持的Gyft还向那些早已购买塑料礼品卡的用户提供一些额外的功能。用户可以把现有实物礼品卡上的余额直接上传到他们的账户里，甚至可以把一张礼品卡转送给他们相熟的亲朋好友。林厄姆说：“我们想让Gyft成为数字钱包，人人都安装在手机上，用来接收礼品卡。”这家公司正式上线后的第一个月里，用户把现有礼品卡上传到这款应用程序上的金额总数超过了100万美元。

    Gyft应用程序面市的时间正赶上假日购物季节，在该公司正式上线后的头90天里，这款应用程序的下载次数累计超过了50,000次。考虑到其中所涉及的资金，这么多的下载次数可谓是一个重要的补充信息。全美零售商联合会（the National Retail Federation）最近进行的一项调查发现，美国81.1%的消费者在今年假日购物季节将购买礼品卡，总支出预计超过285亿美元。通过其应用程序每销售一张礼品卡，Gyft可获得礼品卡价值的10％至15％作为收入，具体比例则取决于发行礼品卡的零售商。

    但消费者用礼品卡实际消费多少并不是礼品卡行业所关心的问题——每年没有使用过的礼品卡会留有数十亿美元的未使用余额。维萨信用卡公司（Visa）进行的调查发现，40％的礼品卡持有者没有兑现礼品卡的全部价值，2011年礼品卡未使用余额总计超过20亿美元。谷歌风投公司普通合伙人乔·克劳斯说：“很明显，有巨额资金困在储值卡或礼品卡上。通过把礼品卡‘映射’到我们随身携带的手机上，礼品卡的使用就方便很多了。”然而，零售商也无法从这些闲置未用的资金中获利。联邦法规禁止零售公司把尚未兑现的礼品卡的销售收入记为营收，意味着零售商和礼品卡持有者都希望消除这种资金闲置浪费的现象。

    Gyft希望从中给予帮助，方式是通过采取精确的方式来解决一个重要的问题。与诸如Giftly或Facebook旗下的Karma等其他礼品赠送公司不同，Gyft专门处理礼品卡，最大限度地缩小在总体网购领域的着力范围。但林厄姆以及联合创始人麦克唐纳和马克·莱维特都希望避免公司过快扩张。Gyft是林厄姆创办的第三家初创公司。2003年，他与别人联合创办了搜索营销公司Clicks2Customers，之后又在2007年创办了网站建立服务公司Yola.com。这一次，他决定保持务求简单的创业构想和经营理念。现年33岁、在南非长大的林厄姆说：“那些非常有创意的人，尤其是创业者，他们面临的一个陷阱是，在展望未来时往往看得太过遥远。使一个人成其为他自己的固有本性同时也是这个人面临的最大敌人。”

    Gyft CEO and Co-Founder Vinny Lingham has one goal: eliminate the plastic gift card.

    That's idea animates San Francisco-based startup Gyft, an app that offers users the ability to buy and then give gift cards directly on their smartphones. Users can purchase gift cards from close to 150 vendors -- including Amazon (AMZN), Nike (NKE) and Old Navy (GPS) -- and send them to any other user of the app. Having the card balance available on your phone, so goes the theory, is more convenient than physical cards.

    Backed by Google Ventures (GOOG), Gyft offers a few additional features to those who have already purchased plastic gift cards. Users can upload the balance of an existing gift card directly to their account, or even re-gift a card to one of their contacts. "We want Gyft to be the digital wallet that everyone has on their phone for receiving gift cards," says Lingham. In the company's first month, users uploaded more than $1 million in existing gift cards to the app.

    Gyft hit the scene just in time for the holiday season, amassing more than 50,000 downloads in the company's first 90 days, an important footnote considering the money at stake. A recent study by the National Retail Federation found that 81% of holiday shoppers plan to purchase gift cards this year. Total spending is predicted to reach more than $28.5 billion, and depending on the vendor, Gyft receives between 10% and 15% of the value of each gift card sold through its app.

    But spending isn't the gift card industry's problem -- unused gift cards leave billions of dollars on the table every year. Research from Visa found that 40% of gift card owners fail to redeem the card's full value, leaving more than $2 billion in gift cards unused in 2011. "It is clear that there is a tremendous amount of value trapped in stored value cards or gift cards," says Joe Kraus, a general partner at Google Ventures. "[Gift cards are] so much more convenient by mirroring them into the device we carry with ourselves all the time." Retailers aren't the beneficiaries of this wasted cash, however. Federal regulations prohibit companies from listing gift card sales as revenue until the cards are redeemed, meaning both retailers and gift card owners want to eliminate the waste.

    Gyft hopes to help by taking a narrow approach to solving a major problem. Gyft, unlike other gift-giving companies such as Giftly or Facebook's (FB) Karma, deals exclusively with gift cards, minimizing its reach in the overall online shopping arena. But Lingham, alongside co-founders CJ MacDonald and Mark Levitt, wanted to avoid expanding too quickly. Gyft is Lingham's third startup: in 2003, he co-founded Clicks2Customers, a search marketing company, and in 2007, Yola.com, a website builder. This time around, he decided to keep things simple. "One of the pitfalls of very creative people, particularly entrepreneurs, is you tend to see too far into the future," says Lingham, 33, who grew up in South Africa. "The inherent nature that makes you what you are is also your biggest enemy."