Being “Swychable” means that the recipient can switch to spend their gift at their favorite retailer in their own country and currency, which puts them in control of their gift, ensuring every gift received is the perfect one.  In addition, users can always buy, send, upload  redeem, and manage their gifts right from their mobile device.

Whether you’re sending an e-gift to a friend or family member, or rewarding and incentivizing your employees, Swych digitizes the entire gifting process through a single user-friendly, cloud-based platform -- all while earning the user rewards for every purchase.

With Swych, gifts can be redeemed anywhere in the world and converted to local retailers and currency of the recipient’s country. Gifts can be instantly “swyched” for a retailer the recipient prefers, re-gifted to another user, or saved for later use. All gift cards are stored electronically in one intuitive interface and are always accessible from the user’s mobile phone.

And with Swych’s Artificial Intelligence-powered GiftBot, we’ve created a first-of-its-kind personal gifting assistant that makes gifting possible from some of today’s most popular messaging apps -- including Facebook Messenger, Skype and Siri.  

From birthdays to holidays to employee rewards and beyond, sending gift cards within social or professional networks has long been a popular practice among both consumers and businesses.  

It only makes sense that gift cards have become the most popular form of prepaid products. When you want to share some money as an incentive, reward, rebate or gift, nothing represents the ultimate go-to solution more than the ubiquitous gift card.

But from a consumer perspective, buying and sending a gift card is still arduous. You’ve got to drive to the store, find the gift card section, guess which of the dozens of options the recipient might like best, then when everything’s said and done, you might pick up something that the recipient has no need for or end up shelling out an extra 5 bucks for a prepaid Visa or Mastercard that they can do with what they will.

Or, you might send someone a gift card by email, only to find it was lost in the ever growing clutter of junk mail. For gifts sent via email,  your recipient has to go find that dust gathering printer, whose ink is always dried out,  to print the email to use the gift card you sent before they set out for a day of shopping.

While there are a few “e-gifting” apps available that allow you to buy or send gift cards online, your recipient can’t pick his or her preferred brand, it’s difficult to gift to someone in another country due to difference in currency, retailer options and exchange rates, there’s minimal digital wallet support, and there’s often issues with fraudulent activity.

From a brand’s perspective, offering gift cards is a great way to increase brand exposure, drive more revenue, get new customers into their store and expand offerings at minimal expense.

That’s where Swych comes in. We’ve designed a solution that makes gifting easier, more streamlined, more rewarding, resistant to fraud, and highly relevant while modernizing the gifting experience for consumers, brands, and businesses alike.

Whether it’s buying gift cards, sending them, receiving them, scanning them, or “swyching” them, Swych has created a solution that enhances the gifting experience for senders, whether they are businesses or consumers and especially for recipients by allowing them to experience the perfect gift every time.  

Just because we jam-packed Swych with a ton of functionality doesn’t mean it has to be tricky to use. The only thing that matches Swych’s technological capability is its ease-of-use. Here’s a quick overview of how it all works:  

Purchasing
Users purchase gift cards securely using Apple Pay, Android Pay, Amazon Pay and PayPal directly within the Swych App and save gift cards to their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. We plan to add even more options such as Venmo, Amex Checkout, Visa Checkout, directly using your credit card number, bank account and even loyalty points to make it a breeze to pay for your gift.

Sending & Receiving
The sender sends a gift in their currency and the recipient chooses how they want to redeem the gift -- whether they choose to select from range of global and national brands in their area, as a “use anywhere” prepaid Visa/Discover/Mastercard or save it and decide later. We plan to add even more options such as cash transferred to your bank account, event tickets or even charitable giving to make redemption of the gift always satisfying.

Claiming
When they get an e-gift card, recipients are notified via email or text message to help them claim it in their Swych Mobile App. Simply select My Cards, tap on the gift card and then tap on the card again to display the gift code. If you are receiving email on your desktop, we do offer a simplified web site to retrieve, claim and switch your gift card as well.

Swych Reward Points and Refer-a-friend
Swych Rewards is our loyalty program that allows users to earn and use points to save on gift card purchases. 1 point is worth a $0.01 discount. For every dollar spent on gift cards, the user earns 1 point. Swych also offers 500 points to every user to refer up to 10 friends, with the points granted when the referred friend first gifts with Swych.

Through Swych’s simple, easy-to-integrate API, any business can take advantage of digital gifting capabilities to reward consumers right through their app, website or social media channel with just a few lines of code.

There’s no setup cost, no complicated bank agreements, no wasted money on unclaimed gifts, and we offer a free sandbox for businesses to try out and develop the API.

Our AI-enabled technology provides businesses with powerful metrics, including gifting demographics, behavioral analytics, transaction patterns, and social and viral use cases.

Provide customers with instant digital delivery so they never lose a gift card and the ability to re-gift or redeem the gift at their preferred retailer or online merchant.

Increase revenue with business sales and incentives programs.

Give more while saving more. 100% digital delivery means you’re not paying for plastic manufacturing.

Instant digital redemption of the recipient’s preferred brand.

Now more than ever, people prefer interacting with their friends, family, and colleagues in social media and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, Slack, and Snapchat.

With the Swych GiftBot, we’re enabling businesses to bring their services to these consumers through an interface they’re not just familiar with, but are consistently active on.

With over 30,000 active users and growing, 120+ merchant brand partners secured, our GiftBot currently in beta on Siri, Skype, and Facebook Messenger, it’s safe to say that our team has hit the ground running and achieved some pretty incredible traction in just a short amount of time.

Here’s a quick glimpse at Swych’s evolutionary chart:

• Seed round Q4 2015.
• Development started January 1, 2016.
• MVP launched July 25, 2016 (iOS app with around 90 retailers in Swych network).
• Won industry recognition as Best of Show at FinovateFall 2016.
• Public launch September 15, 2016 (iOS and Android app with 100+ retailers in network).
• MoU signed with one of the largest Cash Back Rewards program in the US for utilizing the Swych platform, Oct 2016
• Acquired ~20K active users in 3 months by January 1, 2017.
• Swych GiftBot beta launch on Facebook’s Messenger and Skype, Feb 2017.
• Won Best Prepaid Innovation at Pymnts.com Innovation 2017 event, March 2017
• 200+ Retailer sign-ups in negotiation in Canada, India, Japan and Australia
• Various B2B distribution agreements in pipeline in China, Japan and Latin America
• Seed+ Round close estimated for Summer 2017.

Want to learn more about Swych and what they have planned in the future? Make sure to request access to the Business Plan tab of the profile to find out how you can get involved!

Deepak Jain | Founder & CEO | Deepak is a strategic leader with more than 22 years total experience with the last 10 years’ launching, building and selling technology startups. He specializes in bringing innovative technologies to market and holds over 55 granted patents and an additional 50 pending patents in payment and security technologies. Deepak’s previous exits include Moneto to Cachet and DeviceFidelity/Kili technologies to Square.

Anu Shultes | COO | Anu is a consumer-focused payments leader with a passion for bringing innovative financial products to market. She has spent over 20 years in the financial services industry building products, bringing them to the masses through omni-channel marketing, and growing businesses to scale. She was formerly GM of Prepaid Financial Services and Telecom at BlackHawk network, building the company’s financial services product portfolio to $1 billion, including the award-winning T-Mobile Mobile Money prepaid card.

Stephanie Barrueto | VP of Marketing | Stephanie has more than 10 years’ marketing experience including with 2 Bay Area startups that were acquired by Facebook and Square. She directs media relations, branding, advertising, and website development. Stephanie also manages and oversees sponsorships, events, charitable contributions, marketing training, and more.

Linda Yang | Chief Architect and Head of Engineering | Linda is a full-stack web and mobile developer who leads her team in creating authentic, clean, and simply smart software products with great user experiences.

Shallesh Mehta | Founder of Providian, ex Board Member at PayPal and MasterCard.

Mehul Desai | Founder of C-SAM, sold to MasterCard.

Matt Hall | Former Head of Global Payments at Amazon.

David Durant | Former Chief Legal Counsel of Safeway and BlackHawk Network.

Robert Sabella | Co-Founder of Swych, Active angel investor and startup accelerator