Tyler Roye Talks about eGifter’s Deal With eBay
eGifter recently added eBay to its list of gift cards you can buy using Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. eBay is one of the brands along with Amazon that people want the most to be able to shop at using Bitcoin. eGifter’s easy to use service bridges the gap for eBay and many more. Tyler Roye, the CEO of eGifter, has been working hard to bring more and more cards to the digital realm.
Also read: Interview with Tyler Roye, CEO of eGifter
eGifter and eBay
CCN.com had an opportunity to speak with him about adding eBay.
How did the deal come about to be able to sell the eBay cards?
eBay has been on our list of brands we wanted to add since day one. We kept asking and were contacted in late November by their distributor telling us that we had been approved and would get the card in December. We were very happy to hear the good news.
The December timing was great as it allowed people to use their Bitcoin for the holidays on eBay or give them away as gifts. The prepaid card industry is huge which Forbes contributor Tom Groenfeldt predicting the industry would bring $200 billion in merchant sales in 2014.
In 2014, retail purchases made with prepaid cards will top U.S. $200 billion dollars, equaling five percent of all retail spending in the U.S. The purchase volume numbers include prepaid debit, payroll cards, open (from a major card company like Visa V -1.48% or MasterCard MA -1.27% and which can be used anywhere) and closed-loop gift cards (like Starbucks SBUX -3.3%, for example), and open and closed-loop consumer incentive cards.
The opportunity shows the kind of a growth market that eGifter has positioned itself in with Tyler’s leadership. eGifter keeps expanding offering more and more products.
Getting eBay is a big deal in the electronic gift card for Bitcoin sales world;could you tell me your feelings about it and what we can expect?
We carry over 200 major brands for bitcoin at this point and add more interesting brands every month, but the eBay card is really an exciting addition. We have started to spread the word and are already seeing a very strong response. Adding great brands like eBay just sends a signal to other brands that they should be considering opening themselves up to cryptocurrencies one way or another. If they are not ready to do it on their own site, then doing it with a digital gift card via eGifter is a great option.
Could you tell CCN.com how eGifter has been doing these last few months? With BTC value up and down… Have sales still been strong?
Sales have really been incredible. We had a very strong holiday, and for January, the sales growth is tracking well above our expectations, even with bitcoin prices dropping. In November, we also became the only company approved by Amazon to sell their eGift card for bitcoin in the UK, France and Germany, and this is growing very rapidly.
eGifter Powers Smaller Companies
What things do you have in store for eGifter in the near future you can speak about now?
We have more international expansion coming soon. We also power eGift card sales on a lot of brands own websites, mobile sites and mobile apps and are being asked to turn on bitcoin as a payment option. We plan to do a lot of this in 2015.
As we help more smaller companies with their eGift card programs, we intend to educate these companies about the benefit of adding crypto payment options. We, of course, will continue to aggressively add other payment options as well.
Seeing eGifter get eBay and be actively working behind the scenes to power the sales behind other sites and apps shows the broad range their business model has. Actions like this show the strong growth happening in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies as well as gift cards. They seem like a perfect pairing providing many outlets and uses that were not there before. eGifter is a company that is fully in the cybersphere of commerce and is thriving internationally as well as domestically.
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