Guide

Build your own gifting system or use an API?

A gift button looks like a weekend project. The system behind it is not: it is a small bank, a real-time broadcast network and an animation engine, all of which have to be right the first time real coins move. Here is the list, so you can decide with your eyes open.

What a production gifting system needs

A ledger you can trust

• Append-only history; balances that always equal the sum of their entries.
• Atomic sends: the sender's debit and the gift record succeed or fail together.
• Idempotency on every coin-moving request, so retries never double-charge.
• References unique forever, so a purchase is credited once.
• Reversals, refunds and user deletion that keep the books balanced.

Purchase verification

• App Store and Google Play receipt checks, sandbox versus production, duplicate detection.
• Store refund notifications that take coins back.

Real-time delivery

• A WebSocket fan-out that puts every gift on every viewer's screen within a second.
• Reconnects and catch-up after a dropped connection, without duplicates.
• Sharding once a room outgrows one server, and battles with live scores.

The app side, five times

• A gift tray, full-screen effects, combos and notices, for web, React Native, Flutter, Android and iOS.
• Leaderboards, gift walls and a "while you were away" summary.

Operations

• Webhooks with signing, retries and a delivery log; rate limits; an admin view; audits.
• Load testing: gifts arrive in bursts exactly when your biggest stream peaks.

When building it yourself makes sense

• Gifts must pay out real money to creators through your own licensed payment setup.
• You need the coins to live in your existing payments database for regulatory reasons.
• You have a team that can own a ledger, a real-time service and five SDKs long term.

When an API is the better call

• You want the feature in days, not quarters, and your team's time on your core product.
• You sell coins through the stores or your checkout and reward creators your own way.
• You want large live rooms without running a WebSocket fleet.

What GiftingStack covers

Everything in the list above: an append-only ledger with idempotency and unique references, App Store and Google Play receipt verification, live gift rooms load-tested at 250,000 viewers in one room, battles, webhooks, and SDKs for web, React Native, Flutter, Android and iOS with the tray and effects built in. It never handles real money. The test environment is free; live plans start at $29 a month. See pricing or start with the quickstart.