Digital gift card and rewards platform Giftme is gearing up for significant regional expansion as it adds new products and services to fuel its next phase of growth.

Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Rashidi Thomas, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer this week, said the company’s long-anticipated move into other Caribbean markets is finally taking shape. Expansion into parts of Latin America is also part of the road map.

“In the next five years we definitely plan to be present in other countries across the Caribbean and in key Latin American markets as well. Latin America as a large region is very important to us and when combined with the Caribbean, the opportunities for us are vast. As we move forward, part of our longer-term plan could also see us becoming a publicly listed company, but before we get to that, we will continue to do all that is needed to fuel the required growth,” he further said to
Business Observer.

“As a start-up we entered the market at zero, but have been putting in the groundwork and over the past 18 months, we have been seeing significant growth across our business lines,” Thomas added.

The company launched in 2021 now processes over one billion transactions annually, but with the addition of new services, it aims to double volumes within the next year. Through its retail and business-to-business (B2B) lines, the company now services a growing client base made up of over 500 corporates and little over 400 merchants.

“As we continue to expand our offerings, we’ve added services such as bill payments, mobile top-ups and international gift giving on which we have partnered with remittance service providers such as Ding and more recently JN Money,” Thomas also noted.

Moving to accelerate growth through its growing digital platform, Giftme’s recent addition of its new incentive campaigns service seek to widen the promotional channel for its B2B clients.

Offered as a turnkey solution for mainly corporate clients, the new service seeks to distribute campaign-specific e-Gift cards instantly and in a more efficient manner while helping companies to measure real-time return on their investments.

“We see this as a largely untapped area and so we’re trying to grow it significantly as we also look to take it Caribbean wide also,” Thomas stated.

Giftme recently onboarded telecoms firm Flow as one of the first major clients to utilise the incentive campaign service. The telecoms giant is using the platform to reward select fixed-Internet customers with a $20,000 supermarket e-card when they upgrade to a new post-paid mobile plan.

“We are happy to have Flow as a client for this service and in the coming months we look to onboard a lot more companies,” the COO said.

Highlighting the flexibility of the platform, Thomas explained that marketers can tailor reward menus to specific campaign goals — for example, offering appliance and furniture gift cards for mortgage promotions, or gas and auto-supply cards for vehicle-related campaigns.

Unlike traditional giveaways, incentive campaigns helps companies to personalise rewards and also have them delivered to customers who are immediately notified via text, e-mail or app notifications when prizes are awarded, resulting in instant gratification.

“With this digital-first approach, we’ve eliminated the need for customers to physically visit a business location to collect rewards,” Thomas said. “We’ve removed the logistical burden from our clients, enabling them to run more dynamic and effective promotions using Giftme’s technology.”