Nets, a leading European payment services provider and market leading digital gift card provider, Gifted, have entered into a new agreement to offer merchants an innovative digital solution across the Nordics and wider Europe, including DACH, Benelux and France. The solution will enable instant issuing of single-use gift cards to offer a frictionless user experience for consumers, who can receive a fully usable gift card within seconds.

The global gift card market is estimated to grow approximately 12% over the next five years to a total of EUR 900 billion by 2024*. Gifted offers the market a prepaid gift card solution, and Nets will provide the company with Account Management Services – including prepaid cards and transaction processing services – and Lifecycle Management Services, including virtual cards that can be instantly issued to the wallet. The solution is fully digitised with no physical cards required, enabling Gifted to issue cards virtually.

Merchants will benefit from digital gift cards that integrate seamlessly into their regular payments flow, while for customers the experience is very similar to any digitally issued payment card. It will be easy for merchant customers across Europe to partner with Gifted and ensure easy onboarding to their gift card platform, minimising the initial cost and reducing time to market.

“We chose Nets as a well-established player in the European card issuing business with modern and flexible solutions that meet our needs for an automated and digitised solution. The agreement and Nets’ business model goes hand in hand with Gifted’s mission to expand the Gift Card market and enable every brand – big and small – to get access to efficient Gift Card programs without paying a fortune and help us to deliver a new and innovative value proposition to the gift card market,” says Peter Lansfjord, CEO of Gifted. 

The partnership will be collaborative, with a plan for on-going co-creation workshops with both UX teams to drive continuous product innovation.

“A partnership between Gifted and Nets is a great opportunity for us to combine our existing solutions and enter the prepaid card issuing space,” says Torsten Hagen Jørgensen, CEO of Nets Issuer & eSecurity Services. He continues:

“This will further strengthen our suite of attractive payments solutions and support our European growth strategy to provide issuing services across Europe. We look forward to working with Gifted to offer modern, digital and intuitive gift card experiences benefitting cardholders across Europe.”

The new and innovative virtual gift card solution from Gifted and Nets is expected to find its way to the first European customers during 2021, with the Nordics being first to launch.

To find out more visit Nets’ website.

* Source: Technavio Apr 2020, Allied Market Research Dec 2020, Gift Card & Voucher Association (GCVA)