‘Micro-gifting’ startup Shouta launches its app to send small gifts to people you care about

Shouta, a new gifting app for small presents – think sending someone a coffee or beer – launched today.

The idea emerged during the Covid-19 lockdowns with co-founders Carly Shamgar in Sydney and Nick Redwood in Melbourne collaborating to develop a “fun yet meaningful way to show friends and family that they were thinking of them”.

Shamgar, Shouta’s CEO, said she also hopes the app will help boost spending in smaller businesses hit hard by the lockdowns, such as cafes and bars.

“Online gifts generally focus on hampers or flower bouquets which can be upwards of $100 which is quite expensive, especially during these challenging times, when all you want is to send someone a small token of your thoughts,” she said.

“Traditional gift cards are tied to specific retailers, and we wanted to create a way of sending instant, digital gifts that are retailer agnostic so they can be redeemed at the recipient’s store of choice.”

To do that, Shouta has partnered with payments solutions business EML Payments to create a virtual Mastercard that means you can spend the value of the gift wherever the recipient wants.

EML Australia CEO Rachelle St. Ledger called Shouta “the perfect example of disruptive payment innovation in 2020”, especially in the run up to Christmas.

“Carly, Nick and the team custom-created a shake up the market solution to enable straightforward and spontaneous consumer-generated micro-gifting,” she said.

“The timing couldn’t be better as every 100% digital, plastic-free Shout gesture is designed to have a meaningful impact on the environment and personal connections.”

Shamgar calls her customers “Shouters” and “Shoutees”.

To send someone a shout, you select a gift in the app, ranging from $5 coffees to $50 meals or create your own digital Shout, worth up to $250. You can customise the Shout with an image and message and then send an SMS to the recipient with a link to download the Shouta app.

Once they registration, the Shoutee simply adds their Shouta card, a digital prepaid Mastercard to their mobile wallet to tap and pay wherever their Shout is sold.

Shouta charges a small fee on the value of the gift.

The Shouta app is now available for download in the Google and Apple app stores