Behind every great company is a founding story, and ours is pretty special. Since GiftCast was founded in 2019, our customers have sent thousands of money gifts, helping their friends and family members celebrate holidays, birthdays and just because. Today, we want to look at what inspired GiftCast, how we started and where we are headed moving forward.
GiftCast’s original vision was a platform that would replace the need for a wedding gift registry. Guests could give couples a money gift and their suggestion of what to buy, but ultimately the money could be spent however the couple chose. We wanted to personalize gifting and eliminate the feeling of giving and receiving unwanted gifts. As we began to pitch investors, we quickly learned that people were interested in our vision of open gifting, but they encouraged us to simplify and create a truly personal, emotional human experience with each gift. We shifted the platform from web-based gift creation to a strictly mobile platform and realized that video messaging was the most personal way to create emotional connections, especially in contrast to traditional cash gifts. So, we decided to pivot to a video-gifting service, and thus, GiftCast was born.
Creating a new generation of gifting that combines video messages with cash payments came with its challenges, but each one was an opportunity to grow and strengthen our product. The feature that took us the longest to create was the ability to send someone a cash gift without their knowledge. Other money transfer apps notify the recipient as soon as the cash is sent. Since GiftCast is meant to celebrate with a surprise, we wanted to create a paused money transfer system, which was not present on any other payment platforms. After months of hard work, we developed a platform that allowed users to safely and securely transfer a money gift combined with a personalized video message and recipients to view the video and the gift funds, which they could then deposit into their bank account.
At present, we are constantly working on ways to innovate and expand GiftCast’s features to include the latest in app development and technology. As new ways to connect with others online are developed, we will remain at the forefront of the movement to provide our users with the best mobile gifting experience imaginable. In the future, we are looking forward to updating our camera features, utilizing augmented reality facial recognition and adding music to elevate the quality and content of shared videos.
Our mission at GiftCast is to continue providing a sentimental way to share money and a memory with loved ones. We are proud of our accomplishments so far and look forward to continually innovating and expanding the app to make mobile gifting as simple and special as possible.
What features do you want to see on the app next? Let us know on Instagram @GiftCast!
