Swych Unveils Blockchain-Powered Global Gifting and Shopping Platform
Pioneer in global cross-border digital gifting, Swych introduces blockchain technology to its platform to provide unparalleled security, high performance, and instant settlements
DALLAS, Dec. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Swych, a digital gifting platform that currently processes more than a million gifting transactions a year for both consumers and businesses, today announced its advancement to a blockchain-based platform that it believes will significantly reduce the fees and other friction points associated with cross-border gifting. With a network of over 600+ partner brands worldwide, representing billions of products, this transition marks a significant advancement toward Swych's mission of creating the global standard for digital gifting.
The Swych gifting network enables frictionless cross-border person-to-person or business-to-consumer gifting and empowers instant digital gifting transactions with zero fees, agnostic of underlying fiat currency or geography. Any gift sent through the Swych platform can be "swyched," redeemed, and spent at any retailer on the Swych network, ensuring satisfaction of both the sender and the recipient, eliminating the guesswork out of gifting, and erasing the challenge of geographical borders between customers.
CEO and Founder of Swych, Deepak Jain, said "While the world has become increasingly interconnected since the arrival of the internet, the process of sending a gift — and in particular across countries — has remained stagnant with few and unimaginative choices, shipping hurdles and overall customer dissatisfaction. Our blockchain-powered platform will bring long overdue innovation to the $400B gifting market, now expected to grow to $700B by 2024, by making each gift a perfect one for recipients while eliminating loss of value through any fees or foreign exchange conversions."
There has been an estimated $149 million in gift card sales in 2017 – an increase of 54% from 2007. Plastic gift cards have become synonymous with inflexibility, fraud, and obsolete technology. Additionally, traditional gift card networks and distribution schemes are difficult to scale across borders, and plastic gift cards are often forgotten in drawers. Building on its proven success with digital distribution, fraud management and strong data insights in consumers' gifting behaviors, Swych's blockchain integration enables new horizons for cross-border gifting, as well as several exciting new use cases such as loyalty redemption, employee incentives, frictionless travel shopping, and easy access to merchant offers.
Building on the Stellar Network, the platform's blockchain elements operate seamlessly in the background. Swych users can easily send, redeem, and swych digital gift cards without any prior knowledge of blockchain technology, and without compromising on transaction speeds, security, and flexibility of the popular Swych gifting service.
Director of Partnerships of the Stellar Development Foundation, Lisa Nestor, said "By using the Stellar Network, Swych enables instant and secure purchases redeemable with any of their retail partners across the globe. Swych is leading the way forward in the gifting industry by integrating blockchain technology and we're excited to see how the industry will continue to evolve."
Jain said, "Working with Stellar and bringing the inherent advantages of the distributed ledger technology to the forefront, we intend to provide an example to the entire community of how blockchain can be used to solve a real-world problem that pretty much any consumer can identify with. Sending a digital gift to another consumer that can be instantly redeemed and spent for merchandise, travel, dining, entertainment or other popular categories without jumping through the hassles of bank accounts, plastic cards, cash withdrawals or foreign exchange fees is the perfect example of how to use technology to simplify consumers' lives."
This news comes on the heels of Swych's recent partnership with WeChat, Travelex, and Finablr, and acquisition of GiftCardsIndia, which allows Swych users in the U.S. to send personal digital gift cards to loved ones in India. The Swych app is available for download on iOS and Android. For more information, please visit http://www.goswych.com.
About Swych
Swych is a mobile gifting platform enabling users to send "swychable" gifts from their mobile device that can be instantly redeemed for electronic gift cards from more than 600+ popular brands. Swych users can instantly buy, send, re-gift, upload, "swych" and redeem gift cards conveniently from their mobile device. Swych is part of the Finablr network of brands.
With category renowned brands, Finablr's network of companies provides a broad array of innovative and trusted financial solutions for consumers, corporates, and enterprises, through its deep regulatory know-how, relentless focus on technological innovation and a global network of retail stores, digital channels, payments platforms and industry partnerships.
The Swych app is available for download on iOS and Android. For more information, please visit http://www.goswych.com.. For Gift Cards India, please visit http://giftcardsindia.com and http://www.giftcardsindia.in.
SOURCE Swych, Inc.
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