Vinny Lingham’s Gyft launches, is TechCrunch Disrupt finalist

Back in April we gave you an exclusive peek at ex Yola chief Vinny Lingham’s new startup Gyft. Now you can try it out yourself following the social gifting service’s launch at TechCrunch Disrtupt San Francisco.

Lingham, who started Gyft after resigning as CEO of his successful website builder and hosting service Yola, officially announced the launch on his blog.

According to the South African-born entrepreneur, the company also “confirmed for the first time that we raised our financing from Google Ventures, 500 Startups, Founder Collective (and more)”.

Gyft is a mobile gift card app that allows users to store, buy, send and redeem gift cards conveniently from a smartphone or mobile device.

Like the Swedish social gifting company Wrapp, Gyft optimises its viral loop by incorporating Facebook as social platform for card distribution and gifting. Unlike Wrapp and its clone, DropGifts, Gyft focuses on digitised and digitising, physical gift cards. The iOS app also has location aware functionality and produces mobile notifications for expiring gift cards to alert and remind you of spending opportunities.

According to Lingham, the company is “focusing specifically on trying to be the mobile gift card mall for consumers.”

Lingham co-founded Gyft with COO CJ MacDonald, formerly of LiveOps, and Luminate. The company has also partnered with some of the biggest gift card processors in the US, including First Data, Stored Value Solutions, Giftango and CashStar. According to TechCrunch, the four companies combined account for 80% of gift card programmes in the US.

You can check out Gyft’s presentation to the Disrupt judging panel below or, if you’re in States download the app.