Across Asia, digital commerce is scaling at an unprecedented speed. Payments are real-time, marketplaces are more mature, and consumers are deeply embedded in digital ecosystems. Yet one critical layer remains underdeveloped: how non-cash value moves across these ecosystems.
Rewards, vouchers, incentives, and stored value are still managed through fragmented merchant networks, single-brand systems, and manual fulfilment processes. There is limited visibility into usage. This is not a minor operational inefficiency. It is a structural gap in the digital economy.
The scale of the opportunity is significant. The global gift card market is projected to reach US$2.22 trillion by 2034, while ASEAN’s digital economy has already surpassed US$300 billion in GMV.
Businesses increasingly need to move value across employee rewards, customer engagement, partner incentives, merchant-funded campaigns, and loyalty ecosystems. However, the infrastructure supporting these flows has not kept pace.
The real problem: Value doesn’t move efficiently
Every business today needs to move value. HR teams reward employees, banks incentivize customer behavior, insurers drive engagement and retention, and FMCG brands motivate distributors and retailers. Enterprises also run promotions, loyalty programs, and large-scale campaigns.
However, the systems supporting these functions remain rigid. Rewards are often difficult to deploy at scale, limited in where they can be redeemed, poorly aligned with user preferences, and hard to track or optimize. When redemption fails, the entire value chain breaks. A reward that is not used has no impact.
The current system can issue value, but it cannot ensure that value is meaningfully used.
Turning vouchers into infrastructure
Gift2O is a globally positioned brand built to address this gap across markets, with Thyaga as the Sri Lanka based counterpart behind the platform’s development, market validation, and operating foundation. Founded in 2021 and backed by Accelerating Asia Ventures, Thyaga developed the multi-merchant digital value exchange platform that now powers Gift2O’s broader proposition, enabling businesses to issue flexible, usable, and trackable value across ecosystems.
Sri Lanka was Thyaga’s first operating market and the launchpad from which the model was proven at scale before being carried forward through Gift2O’s wider brand positioning. Today, through Thyaga’s operating base in Sri Lanka, the platform serves over 500 corporates and hundreds of thousands of users, supported by a network of more than 200 merchants across over 3,000 outlets. It has also demonstrated repeatable enterprise usage across sectors such as banking, insurance, FMCG, and corporate HR, reinforcing its position as a B2B platform with consumer applicability rather than a consumer gifting business alone.
A fundamental shift: From closed-loop rewards to open value networks
At the core of Gift2O’s approach is a fundamental shift in how vouchers are understood. Traditional vouchers operate as closed systems tied to a single brand and redemption path. Gift2O, powered by Thyaga’s platform infrastructure, replaces this with a multi-merchant value layer, allowing a single voucher to be redeemed across multiple brands, categories, and everyday use cases.
This shift improves usability and directly increases the effectiveness of rewards. The value of a reward is tied to its usability and broader redemption options increase both engagement and perceived value.
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Product decisions that drive real commercial outcomes
This thinking is reflected in product design. The platform’s partial redemption feature allows users to spend part of a voucher and retain the remaining balance for future use, aligning with real-world spending behavior. Combined with multi-channel delivery options, including SMS, email, and physical formats, the platform ensures accessibility across different users and use cases.
Its merchant network expands the likelihood that recipients will find a relevant and usable redemption option within their everyday spending behavior. This strengthens redemption outcomes, improves user experience and engagement, and increases the practical value of each reward issued.
Why this is a B2B infrastructure play, not a gifting business
Gift2O operates at the intersection of payments, engagement, and commerce. Built on Thyaga’s proven platform foundation, it is embedded in high-frequency enterprise workflows, including customer rewards and loyalty programs for banks, retention initiatives for insurers, employee recognition for corporates, distributor incentives for FMCG companies, and promotional campaigns for brands.
Across these use cases, the platform addresses a broader business need: helping organizations issue value in ways that are flexible for users, operationally efficient for businesses, and measurable over time. This positions Gift2O not as a niche gifting solution, but as a horizontal infrastructure layer that can support multiple industries and recurring enterprise workflows.
Traction signals a scalable model
The platform’s growth trajectory reinforces this positioning. The company has achieved 300X growth over the last four years, alongside rapid expansion of both its merchant and enterprise networks. Its usage is increasingly embedded within repeat enterprise workflows, where rewards and incentives are recurring expenditure categories.
This creates a system with compounding value. As the merchant network grows, user experience improves. As user experience improves, enterprise adoption increases. As enterprise adoption increases, transaction volume grows, further strengthening the platform.
The emerging moat: Network, integration, and data
At scale, Gift2O’s defensibility is driven by merchant network density, enterprise integration, and behavioral data. Building and maintaining local merchant networks across fragmented markets is operationally complex, creating barriers to rapid replication.
As the platform integrates into enterprise systems such as HR platforms, banking ecosystems, and loyalty programs, switching costs increase. At the same time, data on redemption behavior enables better targeting, smarter reward design, and improved engagement outcomes. Together, these elements create a reinforcing system where value increases with scale.
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From Sri Lanka to regional relevance
The opportunity extends well beyond Sri Lanka. Across South Asia and Southeast Asia, digital payments and e-commerce are advancing rapidly, but systems supporting non-cash value exchange remain fragmented.
This creates a consistent regional gap. With Thyaga as the local parent company and proven operating base, Gift2O represents the broader outward-facing brand for expansion into other markets. Markets such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, and the Maldives reflect the kind of environments where the need for flexible, multi-merchant value systems is already present. While each market differs, the underlying problem remains the same.
Why now: The rise of embedded value exchange
The timing of this opportunity is critical. The first wave of digital transformation across Asia focused on payments, marketplaces, and access. The next phase is centered on engagement, retention, and the ability to move value across ecosystems.
Businesses are no longer asking whether they can transact digitally. They are asking how to influence behavior, retain users, and drive engagement at scale. This shift requires infrastructure that enables flexible and measurable value exchange.
A category in transition
Gift2O represents a compelling opportunity within this transition. It operates in a large and underdeveloped category, has demonstrated product-market fit, and is built on a scalable B2B model with network-driven advantages. While it may appear to be a voucher platform, it is more accurately building the infrastructure layer for how value moves in digital economies.
What comes next for digital commerce
As digital ecosystems across South and Southeast Asia continue to expand, the ability to move value seamlessly between businesses, merchants, and consumers will become a foundational capability.
Companies that enable this shift will define the next phase of digital commerce. Gift2O, built on Thyaga’s operating foundation and market validation, is positioning itself at that intersection, building a system designed to make value exchange more flexible, more usable, and more integrated into the everyday flow of business.
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This article was sponsored by Gift2O
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Featured Image Credit: Gift2O
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