Gyft, the San Francisco start-up founded by South African technology entrepreneur Vinny Lingham, has secured US$5m in additional capital from new investors A-Grade Investments, Social+Capital Partnership, Karlin Ventures, Haas Portman and entrepreneur David O Sacks.
The additional funding comes on top of an initial seed round in 2012 involving Google Ventures, Founder Collective and 500 Startups.
Lingham, who also founded website builder Yola.com, started Gyft to provide a way for people to buy, send, manage and redeem gift cards using their phones.
“With the funding, Gyft plans to continue development and scale the business to meet future demand for growth,” the company says in a statement. “Gyft currently works with more than 300 retailers and will keep adding merchants and partners, even expanding to markets outside the US next year.”
It says that in the past year, more than $10m and 200 000 plastic gift cards have been uploaded to its service.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen continued growth and we are on track to hit $5m in digital card sales this year,” says Lingham. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media