By Laju Iren

Without any doubt, this is the season for sharing. Hampers, boxes and shiny wrapping papers are now more relevant than at any other time of the year. But even good things come with their own attendant challenges: What if you buy a present someone doesn’t like? What if you never get the chance to get the present across?

Newly introduced gifting solution, My Gift Arena, claims to have these challenges and more covered. Powered by Asos technologies, My Gift Arena is interested in making gifting easier in this season and beyond. Chief Technology Officer at Asos, Mr. James Etim at the launch of the platform held in Lagos recently said: “This is a platform that addresses the loopholes found in the way we give gifts especially in this festive season. Customers can buy vouchers and send vouchers to their friends and loved ones who can then patronize our vendors and buy gifts from them. Our gift vouchers don’t expire and come with no additional cost. If you buy a voucher of N50, 000 for example, we do not charge you an extra kobo.”

Users can decide whether they want open-looped vouchers which can be used in all vendor-stores or close-looped vouchers which are tied to a particular store. It doesn’t just end there. Users can generate vouchers for themselves, providing them opportunity to tailor savings to their specific shopping needs.

The process is a simple one. Users can visit mygiftarena.com to register. After that, they are given the opportunity to load their e-wallet or buy a voucher directly from their debit card. Users can provide some personal information either of themselves or the recipient, select the price of the voucher they want to buy, whether it is open or close-looped and are then led to a secure platform to make payments. Users can also decide in what format they would like their cards delivered: sms, email or specialized card formats.

“Security is something that is very important to us at My Gift Arena,” said Etim, “we have made absolutely sure that we follow the laid down procedures required by the Central Bank of Nigeria to conduct such transactions.” The procedure for corporate organisations to purchase vouchers in bulk even goes a step further to ensure security. For such cards, users would need to register their cards on the website before they can make transactions.

But cards not purchased in bulk by corporate organisations need not be registered. “If it is a private card, all you need do after loading your card is go to any of our vendors, make your purchase and present your card, after which a one-time password would be sent to your phone to be used to confirm payment” added Etim.

Product Manager, Ms Tolu Ofibote, also allayed the fears expressed by many Nigerians with regards to poor network and non acceptance of vouchers at some shops. “We have had very productive discussions with our vendors and have been assured that there would be no such issues when customers present their cards. Also, we have deployed Point of Sale, PoS terminals to all our vendors.