Fokado Founder Launches Multifunction TaDa! Gift Card

After months in development, Antonius Taufan, who co-founded Fokado following his term at Founder Institute, officially launched his second company Giftcard.co.id. The service actually went live in February of this year and had been acquiring clients at a rapid pace. The corporate oriented company offers gift cards and shopping vouchers from over 40 major partners across many different categories as well as its own TaDa! branded multifunction gift cards.

Visitors to giftcard.co.id can purchase gift vouchers directly, which can only be used at the corresponding outlets, or they can purchase TaDa! cards which can be kept around and used for different purposes.

Operating under the same group, Giftcard.co.id is run mostly by the same team as Fokado, which offers experiences rather than items or objects as gifts. During id-byte roadshow back in April, Taufan told DailySocial that Fokado is doing quite well. While he did not disclose the number of deals made, he said that the majority of his business had been coming from the corporate sector as companies offer Fokado experiences as rewards to their employees.

It is through these corporate deals that Taufan and his team have managed to develop a relationship strong enough to deploy his gift card business. Companies that have signed up to Giftcard.co.id include Indonesian retailing giant group Mitra Adi Perkasa, convenience store chains Alfa Mart and Indomaret, supermarkets Carrefour, Giant, Hypermart, department stores Debenhams and Matahari, consumer electronics chain Electronic Solutions, Gramedia book stores, restaurants Poke Sushi, Marutama Ramen, Pepper Lunch, Tamani, and dozens more other businesses.

TaDa! is also accepted at 11 charity organizations such as Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa, Lentera Indonesia, Yayasan Lupus Indonesia, Indonesian Wildlife Conservation Foundation, and the Goodwill Foundation among others.

"For corporate clients, TaDa! can be used as a marketing tool, employee/dealer incentives, and for customer loyalty. TaDa! Can be personalized according to clients' needs. With customized value and design, the company brand will have greater exposure and will stand out co pared to using generic gift cards," Taufan explained.

TaDa! gift cards have no expiry dates and can be used for three different purposes, as a standard commercial gift card, as a way to give money to charitable organizations, and they can also be exchanged for cash. While transactions with TaDa gift cards generally don't incur a charge, exchanging the card value with cash will incur a 9% transaction fee.

Taufan said during the press conference on Wednesday that they decided to implement this fee to encourage they use of the gift cards to be used at partner outlets or to be given out to charity rathe than be used as a fund transfer mechanism.

Each card can be used for one method of exchange or a combination of them and consumers can top up the value in their TaDa! gift cards and use it towards their intended transactions.

Taufan explained that TaDa! does not function as an electronic wallet as the value in TaDa! cards are not immediately redeemable at partner locations but must be exchanged with gift vouchers from any of its partners. It is those gift vouchers which can be exchanged with products or services at partner locations.

TaDa! cards only work after they've been activated on the website and through this process, consumers have the ability to cancel cards if they happen to be lost and have them replaced by a new card with the value stored within the other card transferred over. In other words, a lost card will not result in lost value.

A gift card economy is not alien to Indonesian consumers, not by far, but this perhaps this attempt to centralize all the gift cards and make them easier to discover and purchase could be a way to help transition from cash to non cash, depending on the acceptance in the market.

At this point this is yet to be a fully digital undertaking but if the company brings all the partners together into deploying robust mobile applications that streamlines the purchase and exchange of gift cards and gift vouchers, it could introduce a change in the market, one that may circumvent the regulations governing electronic wallet transactions.