Gyft to Launch Virtual Card Store on First Data's Clover Station

Gyft, a provider of virtual gift cards, plans to launch Gyft Cloud, a marketplace for merchants to sell their own digital gift cards with Clover Station, a tablet-based point of sale system developed by First Data Corp.

Gyft Cloud also allows businesses to issue store credit rather than give cash refunds. Gyft plans to launch Gyft Cloud within the Clover App Market in May.

"Offering plastic gift cards can be cost prohibitive and an operational nightmare for small to mid-sized business owners, so much so that an estimated 90% of them do not offer gift cards," says Vinny Lingham, co-founder and CEO of Gyft, in an April 7 press release. "So even though many owners want to sell gift cards, they just don't have the budget or capabilities to enable them. With Gyft Cloud, [businesses] can now easily implement and immediately start selling digital gift cards to increase their business and customer loyalty."

Digital gift cards, while still a small portion of the overall prepaid card market, have been growing in popularity as card providers have used technology to make their products more flexible. For example, Kiind offers digital gift cards that let the recipient choose the merchant that will accept their cards; and Gyft supports alternative funding methods such as PayPal and Bitcoin.