Facebook
has unveiled Facebook Gifts for the Indian users, a service which
allows users
to send offline gifts to their friends and families in U.S. but it doesn’t allow sending gifts to users in India. In order to use the service, the user should have a contact based in the US on Facebook, according to the reports of MediaNama.
The option “Give Gift” is located at the top of the Facebook profile. It offers various categories like food, wine, apartment, bar, flowers, baby/kids and the like. Once a category is chosen, a digital card should be selected where the sender can personalize it with a message which is then forwarded to the payment gateway. Currently, only credit cards work as a payment mode.
Once the gift is sent, the recipient will receive an email as well as a notification on Facebook. Clicking on the particular notification leads them to view the gift and read the card. The users have the option of posting the gift on the recipient’s profile.
For this service, users
don’t require the recipient’s address. Facebook asks the recipient for
the address for the delivery of the gift. Shipping cost depends on the
price of the gift and most gifts are shipped within a day and might take
3 to 5 business days. The service allows a preview of the gift for the
recipient. Recipients are free to swap the gift for an item of equal or
lesser value.
The service can turn out to be a boon to the Indian eCommerce sites and even competes with online gifting services. Recently, Flipkart started accepting International credit cards allowing international users to send gifts to friends and family in India.
